


All We've Got Is Tonight

by pcychedelic (orphan_account)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Exes, F/M, Flashbacks, Post-Break Up, Sexual Content, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-24 22:30:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/pcychedelic
Summary: Weddings bring everyone together—families, friends, old classmates, and exes who have ten years worth of baggage to unload.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer:  
> This is a work of fanfiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents may represent real entities, but are used fictitiously as a product of the author's imagination; this work does not mean them any harm or offense. This work is the intellectual property of the author and it, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.
> 
> Author's Note:  
> Your friendly neighborhood Chanyeol stan slash fic writer is back after three months! I have to admit, this fic was hard to write. Possibly the hardest next to [Between The Lines](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15816297), but miraculously, I've made out of it alive. The idea for this fic came to me after I watched the film [Exes Baggage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvX8axLtwPI) (please watch it if you haven't, it's SO good), so yeah, this is low-key inspired by that, but this fic is mostly inspired by... well, real life events. This fic reminds me of [Chances](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14367453), to be honest, and if you've read that, you'll get what I mean. I'd like to thank my amazing beta readers, Allyssa, Alondra, Faye, Liberty, and Tam for their patience and suggestions. Some places and things might sound familiar to Filipino readers; additional details are explained at the end notes. The title is taken from “[Tonight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1CIwXiW0j4)” by Nina Juan. I hope you all enjoy reading this!
> 
> Dedication:  
> To K, who will always be part of my heart and my stories.

_“I’ve been searching for a trail to follow again;  
Take me back to the night we met.”_

_(Lord Huron,_ [ _The Night We Met_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtlgYxa6BMU) _)_

—

 

**_Present Day_ **

The salty night breeze is cool and crisp against your flushed skin. Your cheek feels warm against your palm when you lean on it; perhaps you’ve had five too many glasses of wine for this evening.

The newlyweds are slow dancing to a jazz instrumental version of “Grow Old With You” as they gaze at each other lovingly, and your lips couldn’t help but form a wistful smile. Kyungsoo’s world-famous heart-shaped grin is on full display as it has been all night. No one can blame him, really; Yuna looks beyond beautiful in her wedding gown, the light reflecting on the embedded crystals making her shine—quite literally—as if she isn’t already the most alluring woman in the room. They make a rather striking pair.

Their song choice may be questionable (“Grow Old With You” is _terribly_ cliché for a wedding), but the pure bliss in their eyes is undeniable. Anyone with two eyes can tell that they are what each other has been looking for: the missing piece of the puzzle, or so they say.

You’re not sure how to describe it anymore, because it’s been a while since you’ve felt anything like that—since you’ve felt love.

Something buzzes on the table. Your phone lights up as you look down, displaying a text from a pathetic excuse for a best friend. You still can’t believe he left you here alone.

**[ Sehun / 20:46 ]  
** _So… did you cry already? I know how weddings turn you into a crybaby._

**[ You / 20:46 ]  
** _Shut up. Don’t text me. I’m still mad at you._

**[ Sehun / 20:48 ]  
** _Nah, you love me too much. Is he there?_

Your head instinctively snaps up after reading Sehun’s message, looking for someone you know well isn’t there. As much as you hate to admit it, you’ve been looking for him all night. To be fair, he’s supposed to be one of Kyungsoo’s closest friends, so he _should_ be here. But you’re not sure if you’re just telling yourself that in order to justify the disappointment that you felt when you couldn’t find him anywhere.

Byun Baekhyun’s signature smirk suddenly comes into view. “Looking for someone?” He teases, as if he already doesn’t know the answer to his question. He’s still the same annoying kid after all these years.

“Maybe,” you shrug, sipping the last of your fifth wine glass as you arch your brow playfully. “Or maybe I was just looking to see which new girl you’ve managed to charm since the reception started. I stopped counting at four.”

Baekhyun laughs, the loud and high-pitched one he lets out when he’s losing it, and the sound carries a heavy wave of nostalgia with it that almost knocks you off your seat. It’s reminiscent of the high school days when the teacher wasn’t around and you and your friends would circle your armchairs around and just talk and laugh about things, with Baekhyun right in the middle of the commotion as he always was.

 _That was so long ago_ , you realize. Something pinches your heart.

“Hmm, maybe you’re the next girl I’ll charm tonight.”

Rolling your eyes, you say, “I thought we’ve established long ago that your ‘charms’ don’t work on me.”

“I know,” Baekhyun concedes, but the mischievous smile still hasn’t left his lips. “Everybody knows only one guy has managed to break through your great wall of feelings.”

It’s funny, how just as Baekhyun says that, the man you’ve been searching for all night finally shows up.

He heads to Kyungsoo and Yuna’s table before anything else, apologizing for his astounding punctuality. Nothing much has changed in the way he looks; perhaps he’s grown a bit bulkier and a couple inches taller, but he still exudes the same elfish charisma that you’re all too familiar with.

Another thing you’re all too familiar with? The pang in your chest that only he can incite.

With cold and shaking hands, you grab your phone on the table.

**[ You / 20:59 ]  
** _He’s here. He just arrived._

**[ Sehun / 21:00 ]  
** _Interesting._

Ignoring Sehun’s cryptic reply, you lock your phone and put it back down.

You look up to find him now standing in front of you. He looks even more the same up close—it’s almost terrifying. Your chest tightens as you take your first good look at him after ten years; his smile is just as you remember it—as bright as the sun—and his hair is styled in a way that resembles a comma, just like it was back in high school. He looks beautiful, just as you left him. Or rather, the other way around. Technically, it’s him who left you.

You haven’t seen him in so long that now, as you’re looking at him, he looks unreal, like he just somehow materialized from your memory. He seems like a dream, and he is. He always has been a dream.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hey, Chanyeol.”

 

 

**_October 2005_ **

“Chanyeol, _please_ sit down,” Ms. Song sighs.

You laugh at the kid who was scolded. Chanyeol. He’s always at the receiving end of teachers’ scolding, but he’s not really a troublemaker. Well, not totally. He’s just goofy, that’s all. He always has this unmeasurable energy, like he eats a jar of sugar for breakfast, but he’s a nice kid.

You’ve never really talked to him in depth, but he seems like the type of person that wouldn’t be hard to be friends with. Well, he’s friends with Baekhyun, so that’s another good sign.

“Okay, now that Mr. Park’s finally settled down,” Ms. Song begins, “let’s begin our agenda for today. First things first: seating arrangements.”

The class collectively sighs.

“I hate this part of the year,” Sehun whispers. “I don’t want to switch seats. I’m perfectly fine with where I’m seated right now.”

You scoff. “You’re saying that because you copy off of me.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” he says. “Who do you want to be seated next to for the rest of the year?”

You look around the room to see if there’s anyone you’re particularly fond of. “Hmm, I’m okay with anyone, actually,” you decide.

“I’m jealous,” Sehun pouts, and for a split second, you almost feel bad for him, but then you remember that he’s Sehun. “I’ll take anyone as a seatmate except for Baekhyun. I don’t think I can handle his mouth.”

You just laugh at Sehun’s remark. Byun Baekhyun’s infamous for being loud and outgoing. Teachers usually have a hard time shutting him up.

But Baekhyun’s nice, judging from all the times you’ve hung around him. He’s very easy-going, not difficult at all to be around with. As a matter of fact, you admire his personality; you appreciate people who always find a way to make the mood lively. Perhaps that’s why he’s friends with Chanyeol: they’re like the same person but in different bodies.

“Ms. Class President, if you’re done chortling with Mr. Oh over there, maybe you can come up here and help me do the roll call.”

“Sure thing, Ms. Song,” you smile because you know that she’s not really mad. One of the perks of being class president: you’re the homeroom adviser’s favorite. “‘Kay, guys, you know the drill: take all your stuff and form two lines at the side of the room and then sit where I tell you to.”

The class does as they’re told, but not without a few sad sighs and quiet complaints.

You’ve been in Ms. Song’s advisory class since freshman year and it’s been a tradition to change the class’ seating arrangement after every semester. Though, you’re not sure what’s the point of all this. For all you know, it’s just a waste of Ms. Song’s time to draw up different seat plans every six months, but to her credit, she always comes up with interesting seating arrangements.

The desks are arranged by two, so you don’t really have a choice but to try to get along with whoever your seatmate is going to be. This is why you couldn’t hide your laughter when you saw who Sehun was going to be stuck with for the semester.

“Oh Sehun, you get the honor to sit in the front row this time.”

In very Sehun-like fashion, he makes his way to the seat up front with his signature eye roll. He mutters something about Ms. Song being an old hag while he walks past you, but you couldn’t catch the rest of his sentence. There’s probably some more profanities in there somewhere.

“Byun Baekhyun…”

“Oh hell no,” you hear Sehun say from his seat.

Baekhyun beams. “No way. I get to sit at the front?”

“No,” Sehun repeats in disbelief.

“Yes,” you confirm with a sweet smile that you know will piss Sehun off.

Baekhyun makes his way to the other side of the desk where Sehun’s seated as you continue calling other names, and even though you couldn’t see Sehun, you’re pretty sure he’s scowling right now.

The roll call goes on. “Doh Kyungsoo, you’re with Kim Jongdae. Kim Jongin…” You falter for a second until you realize that you’re speaking in front of the class. You clear your throat, hoping no one noticed. “Jongin next to Soojung.”

From the corner of your eye, you could feel Sehun _not_ trying his best to hide his smirk. You try your best not to glare at him and quietly remind yourself to kill him at lunch.

Jongin walks past you with Soojung following behind him, and you try to ignore the jealousy stabbing at your chest. Of all people, _why_ did it have to be him and her?

Wanting to end the roll call as soon as possible, you babble, “Chanyeol, you’re with me,” before quickly closing Ms. Song’s class book and handing it back to her.

“Thank you, Class President,” she says. “Everyone good with their new seatmates?” A few unsatisfied whispers resonate throughout the room. “Oh, save your breaths. We all know it doesn’t matter who sits next to who in this class, you’re all gonna get loud in a few weeks time anyway. Now onto the second thing on our agenda…”

You probably should’ve been listening to that since you’re class president and all, but you’ve grown a sudden interest in your new desk because your stupid brain couldn’t stop thinking about how Jongin and Soojung are going to be seated next to each other for the rest of the year.

“That was really subtle, by the way,” your new seatmate whispers in your ear. You look at Chanyeol with fake confusion. He expounds, “You know, the roll call with Jongin and Soojung. _Really_ subtle. Pretty sure no one noticed how you looked like someone died when you read their names together.”

You let out a half-hearted chuckle. “Baekhyun was right. You _are_ hilarious.”

“What else has Baekhyun said about me?” He smirks.

“Not much,” you admit. “You’ll have to fill me in on the things he missed.”

 

 

**_Present Day_ **

“This whole situation is so awkward that it puts the time my mom asked my dad about his mistress to shame,” Baekhyun laughs. He’s right about this moment being awkward, but you’re not sure if he’s kidding about that other thing.

“Thank you, Baekhyun, for pointing out the obvious and for that anecdote no one asked for,” Chanyeol says, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

Baekhyun stands up from his seat. “I’m impressed, Yeol. You use words like ‘anecdote’ now. Ten years ago you probably didn’t know what that meant.” Chanyeol gives him the middle finger and Baekhyun playfully slaps it away. “I guess I’ll leave the two of you to fill in each other on the things you’ve missed for the past ten years,” he simpers. “Ciao!”

When Baekhyun is out of earshot, Chanyeol says, “He’s still so… annoying.”

“Can’t argue with your logic,” you agree, laughing as you do. “I think it’s cute, though. He hasn’t changed a bit since high school.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be a bad thing? People not changing?”

“Well, it depends on the situation,” you decide after thinking about it for a while. “What I meant was that Baekhyun’s still playful. It’s kind of nice that something from high school still survived after ten years.”

“I guess you’re right,” he chuckles as he finally takes a seat beside you. “You’ve changed, though. Long time no see.”

Suddenly the room feels too cramped despite the venue being outdoors with the soft sound of waves crashing against the shore and the gentle sea breeze blowing through the reception.

“Really?” You force yourself to laugh, trying your best to ignore the way your chest is tightening. “When I saw you I thought you didn’t change much. I just thought you grew taller even though I’m not sure how that’s possible.” _You’ve changed a long time ago,_ you want to add.

Chanyeol smiles, the kind that causes only the left side of his mouth to curl up. Oh, how you’ve missed seeing that. “You just… look different. You’re smiling wider now. It’s nice.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you sported a terrifying resting bitch face in high school,” he says. “I’m pretty sure you’re aware of that, though. You’re just acting coy right now.”

You smile as you look at Chanyeol curiously, trying to gauge what game he’s playing at tonight.

‘Long time no see’ is the understatement of the century when it comes to the two of you—it’s been literally a decade since you last spoke, let alone saw each other, and yet he’s sitting here casually with you, conversing as if the last message he sent you wasn’t a birthday greeting that never got a response.

It’s not that you haven’t forgiven him. It took you a long time to realize it, but you’ve forgiven him so long ago. It just feels… weird; weird in a sense that it’s like the past ten years never happened, like the two of you are normal friends that are continuing a conversation that was interrupted.

“I’ll admit to the resting bitch face, but not the terrifying part,” you say after a while. “You were never terrified of me. You actually acted way too familiar when we first became seatmates in sophomore year, teasing me about Jongin and shit. It was really annoying, by the way.”

Chanyeol shakes his head and says, “I was _extremely_ terrified of you. Everyone was. Apart from the permanent scowl, you were class president and everything, so you were practically untouchable. I was just trying to be friendly because I saw you hanging out with Baekhyun and anyone who’s okay with Baekhyun’s okay with me.”

“What are you talking about?” You laugh incredulously. “Everyone and their mother’s okay with Baekhyun. He was like friends with the entire school and the whole town.”

“What I meant was,” he begins to explain himself, “Baekhyun was scared of you too, but you turned out to be cool. So I assumed you had the same humor as we did.”

Your brow arches in interest. “Byun Baekhyun was scared of me in high school?”

“Plenty,” Chanyeol confirms, nodding. “Pretty sure he still is. I think everyone else, too. You have a pretty strong personality, and even though Baekhyun acts all laidback and shit, he’s scared of women who come off strong. I’m still wondering how he managed to woo Taeyeon… you remember her, right?”

“I remember Kim Taeyeon, all right,” you nod. She was literally all the boys in the school talked about, so it doesn’t make sense for anyone to not know her. “So is that why Baekhyun’s such a serial flirt? Is it his defense mechanism for women with strong personalities?”

Chanyeol shrugs, “I wouldn’t know. I’m an engineer, not a therapist. Maybe, though.”

 _He became an engineer after all_ , you silently tell yourself. Before you can say anything about it to Chanyeol, your phone buzzes again.

**[ Sehun / 21:36 ]  
** _You’re talking to him right now… aren’t you?_

**[ You / 21:37 ]  
** _What if I am? We’re just catching up._

**[ Sehun / 21:37 ]  
** _“Catching up” my balls._

“Sehun?” Chanyeol asks, stealing quick glances at your phone. He’s smiling, but there’s something else in his eyes. You don’t want to find out what that is. “I was wondering why he isn’t here.”

“I see that you’re still as nosy as ever.”

Chanyeol crosses his arms in front of his chest defensively. “To be fair, I wasn’t the one who asked you for your Twitter password when we were still—”

“You still play ball?” You question quickly to avoid the direction Chanyeol’s trying to steer this conversation into. It’s one thing to catch up; it’s another thing to bring up irrelevant things about the past. “I heard you made varsity in college.”

“Pool B, but yeah,” he answers quietly. “My favorite court’s still the run-down one in our old campus, though. Nothing compares to that, even though the backboard was practically just one layup away from breaking into a million pieces. You remember that?”

Of course you remember that stupid basketball court. How could you not?

“You and Baek and all the other guys cut class just to play ball. Delinquents.”

“Hey!” Chanyeol complains, “You did too!”

 

 

**_November 2005_ **

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

An annoying shadow blocks the sunlight from where you’re seated. You open your eyes to see the source of the shadow—an equally annoying person. Chanyeol wriggles his eyebrows at you, prompting you to answer him, but your mind goes blank as your vision recovers from the sudden light.

Chanyeol’s uniform is unbuttoned, revealing an undershirt that is horrible at being an undershirt as it leaves very little to the imagination as sweat makes the thin fabric cling to Chanyeol’s skin, outlining the muscles of his torso.

You swallow thickly as you try your best to sound unconcerned. “Can you get your tits out of my face? We get it, you work out. Now, _move_. I’m trying to get some sun here.”

“You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here? Isn’t it third period?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” You turn the tables around. It’s hilarious how he’s telling you that you’re supposed to be in class while him and his friends are playing basketball at possibly the ugliest court in the entire world when they know full well that it’s third period.

Chanyeol sighs, wiping the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand. “Look, you’re class president. Mr. Lee’s gonna notice that you’re gone.”

“Who do you think sent me?” He freezes as soon as you say that, his eyes growing so wide you’re convinced they’re going to pop out of this head any second now. He almost runs to his other delinquent friends when you yank him back and try not to die of laughter. “I’m joking, Chanyeol.”

“What?”

“Mr. Lee didn’t send me. He didn’t even go to class today. It’s free cut.”

Chanyeol still doesn’t look convinced, narrowing his eyes at you. “You’re serious?” You nod sincerely. “If you’re messing with me I’m gonna stick gum on your desk after the detention I get for cutting class.”

“That’s a disgusting threat. Lame, but disgusting.”

“You know you’re still holding my wrist, right?”

Your eyes travel down your hand clasped around his wrist, immediately letting it go when you realize that Chanyeol’s right. You pray that you don’t look as red as you feel right now.

Chanyeol chuckles for reasons you have no interest in finding out and sits next to you on one of the stone benches that surround the old basketball court. The place is older than any of you were; it’s been here since before your brother graduated, and even that was eight years ago.

It’s been bugging you for a while now why school administrators won’t just destroy the court and turn it into something else useful, maybe a football field or something, since the court only takes up a small portion of the field at the heart of campus.

Sehun argued before that maybe it has sentimental value to the students, which is why the administration never so much considered removing the basketball court, but you doubt that. What kind of memories would be tied to this place aside from memories of teenage boys doing stupid-looking drives to the hoop and being horrible at ball handling?

“You play?” Chanyeol asks, breaking your train of thought.

“Are you inviting me to play or are you just asking?”

Chanyeol chuckles and softly shakes his head. Lines form beside his eyes when he laughs, you’ve noticed. It’s cute; it means he smiles so much. “I’m just asking, but I’m not assuming that you can’t play. I mean, girls can be good at basketball too.”

“Congratulations on not being sexist,” you comment, which makes Chanyeol laugh. You rest your palms on the space beside either of your hips, and your pinkie briefly grazes Chanyeol’s before you adjust it slightly away. You try to ignore the odd spark that you felt when your skin brushed against him. “I play a different kind of game,” you say.

“If I didn’t know that you played volleyball, I would’ve thought that was another way of saying you’re a serial killer or something.”

“Yeah,” you say, shutting your eyes in laughter. “But I know how basketball works. My dad’s a huge Gin Kings fan, and my mom used to play back in her day. They kinda rubbed off on me.”

“That’s cool,” Chanyeol nods, but he doesn’t seem entirely convinced.

“Perhaps you’re still a bit sexist, after all,” you raise your brows at him. “I understand, though. Sophomore boys have the mental capacity of a goldfish. Boys in general, actually. Wait, that might be a little insulting to goldfish as a species.”

Chanyeol raises his hands in front of him, gesturing that he doesn’t mean any offense. “I just said that it’s cool. What’s sexist about that?”

“You don’t seem to be buying it.”

“Well…”

You raise an eyebrow at him. “Quiz me, then,” you challenge.

And so you spend the afternoon sitting beside Chanyeol, talking about what constitutes a flagrant foul and who are currently in the Gin Kings’ roster and whatnot with the cold November breeze stinging your cheeks and turning your skin pink. The conversation goes from basketball to all sorts of things, and you realize that Chanyeol is more than just the goofy kid in class who also happens to be your seatmate.

The two of you stay even when Baekhyun and Jongdae and the other guys have finished playing, and the next thing you know, you begin to spend every afternoon with Chanyeol on the very same bench, talking about anything that can be talked about.

Most of the time you still talk about basketball, but somewhere in between you’ve learned about each other’s first loves, each other’s pet peeves, each other’s favorite horror movies. When your pinkies brush against each other, you don’t feel the need to move it away anymore, letting the spark from the contact linger in the air like a question that doesn’t need to be answered out loud.

Well, maybe not yet.

Sehun was right—this old basketball court _did_ have sentimental value to the students. You just didn’t have any memories tied to it… until Chanyeol.

 

 

**_Present Day_ **

Baekhyun returns a few minutes later with another familiar face, the last person to complete their golden trio when they were in high school.

Kim Jongdae smiles from ear to ear as he makes his way to the table where you and Chanyeol are sitting, and he doesn’t need to speak for you to know what he’s thinking about. Jongdae’s playfulness is more subtle than Baekhyun’s, but it’s there. If anything, the fact that he’s not upfront about his teasing is what makes it more effective.

“Yeol, long time no see,” Jongdae greets Chanyeol first and then nods at you. “It feels so weird being with all of you right now… It’s like I’ve time-traveled to ten years ago. What have you all been up to since high school?”

That’s the question of the night, isn’t it?

Baekhyun’s the only one you know a lot about. He and Sehun went to the same college, and their campus was practically just a stone’s throw away from yours, so that would naturally mean that you saw him around.

On the contrary, Jongdae’s been difficult to keep track of. For some weird reason, he doesn’t have any social media accounts, so you don’t know anything about him other than the fact that he went to State U. You wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already married or something without you knowing. It’s nothing personal, really—Jongdae was a good friend in high school, but some friends inevitably lose in touch with each other as they grow older and, in turn, busier. That’s just how life is.

“Hey, Dae,” you call him, “What happened to you after high school? I know about State U, but that’s about the extent of my post-high school knowledge about you.”

Baekhyun scoffs, rolling his eyes at Jongdae. “You wouldn’t believe how difficult it was to get a hold of this guy when he entered that damn university.” Jongdae starts to protest, but Baekhyun’s mouth overpowers him. “Whenever we would ask him to go out, he would say he was busy with school and shit. I mean, I get it, he’s always been like that ever since, but to see your best friend only, like, once every three months? I have to admit, I was _offended_.”

“It’s not like that, Baek—”

Chanyeol butts in even before Jongdae could finish defending himself, “And on the days he would agree to go out with us, he was always the first to go home,” he laughs. “Must’ve been boring, not having much of a life outside of school.”

Jongdae opens his mouth to say something again, but Baekhyun cuts him off again. “At least he graduated with Latin honors, didn’t he? Graduated with a 3.9, practically unheard of. Was it worth it, though? Trading your friends for the highest damn GPA of all time?”

At this point all Jongdae could do is sigh. “Yes, Baekhyun, it was worth it. Having good credentials on my résumé is better than having you two assholes as friends.”

You laugh at the trio’s bickering, realizing that you’ve missed witnessing this in person. It’s like the years are melting away from everyone’s faces—as if you aren’t adults in your mid to late twenties but stupid teenagers teasing each other. It’s refreshing, you must admit, how everything about this conversation feels natural, even with Chanyeol in the mix.

“What are _you_ laughing at?” Jongdae suddenly turns his attention to you in the midst of his petty squabble with Baekhyun and Chanyeol. “You weren’t easy to get in touch with either, you know. I have no idea what happened to you after you and Chanyeol bro—”

The sound of silverware clinking against glass shushes the reception before Jongdae could finish his sentence and you couldn’t be any more thankful for it. Kyungsoo’s the one making the sound as he stands up from the bride and groom’s table, thanking everyone for being present in what could possibly be the most important day of their lives.

As you clap for Kyungsoo’s speech, you feel a pair of eyes lingering on you. _Chanyeol_. The smile he was sporting just seconds ago is now gone, an unreadable expression now replacing it on his lips. At first, he seems to be just looking at you, but you soon realize that his eyes are trained on your neck.

Slowly, his clapping comes to a stop and his eyes flicker to yours.You know what he was just looking at.

“And now I would like to call on one of my closest friends. He’s one of the few people that made college and life in general bearable. I don’t know where I would be without him,” Kyungsoo announces from the high table. “He arrived late, but he told me that he would make up for it by singing a song to me and my wife. Park Chanyeol, come on up here.”

The crowd’s applause snaps Chanyeol back into reality, and he tears his eyes away from the object around your neck. He makes his way onto the small stage just beside the bride and groom’s table and sits on the stool perched on the platform. A staff brings him a guitar.

He clears his throat before speaking into the mic, “Good evening, everyone. I… I haven’t played or sung this song for quite some time now, so please bear with me if I kinda suck.” Soft laughter fills the gazebo. “Kyungsoo practically held me at gunpoint just so I would sing this song, but I’m more than happy to sing this in front of all of you for our newly-weds. Let’s give them a big hand!”

When the claps slowly dies down, Chanyeol starts strumming on the guitar. All it takes is the first few chords for your heart to stop beating and for your mind to travel back to when you first heard Chanyeol sing this song.

 

 

**_December 2005_ **

Chanyeol’s room is not at all what you initially expected. You expected it to be like your brother’s: messy and chaotic, with all sorts of stuff scattered everywhere, practically a pig-sty rather than a bedroom. Instead, you find yourself gaping at Chnayeol’s spotless room; everything is arranged neatly, from his bed to his desk. Hell, your room’s even messier than his.

“Are you sure this is your room?” You ask as you enter. “This is not how a sixteen year old boy’s room should look like.”

Chanyeol laughs as he sets his backpack on his desk chair. “Not all boys are disgusting, you know. There are boys who like to keep their room clean. Exhibit A,” he says, pointing to himself.

“He has to keep his room clean or else his sister’s gonna smack him in the head,” Baekhyun chides from behind you, carrying a large bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips in one hand and a pack of root beer in the other. “It’s not like he’s keeping it clean because he actually wants to.”

Heeyeon snorts as she takes a seat on a bean bag in the corner of the room. Baekhyun tosses her the bag of chips and she catches it without fault, ripping the bag open and popping chips into her mouth. You highly doubt that the rest of you will be left with some of it to munch on while working on your group paper.

“This is why no one likes you, Baek,” Chanyeol says. “You talk too much.”

“We like him,” Heeyeon counters, and you nod to prove her point. “But I agree with the last part.”

Baekhyun shouts triumphantly, “Ha! See? Everyone loves Byun Baekhyun.”

“Yeah, everyone but Taeyeon.”

You laugh at Chanyeol’s comment while Heeyeon chokes on the potato chips she’s chewing, and the look of genuine hurt on Baekhyun’s face makes everything a hundred times funnier. Baekhyun doesn’t say anything after that, and Chanyeol’s lips curl into a smug smile, knowing that he won this round.

“Whatever,” Baekhyun says petulantly as he sets the pack of root beer onto Chanyeol’s bed. “Door open or closed?”

Chanyeol replies, “Closed. Yoora almost fainted when I told her that two girls were spending the night here. She’d definitely kill me if she sees my door closed. You’d have to search the river for my body.”

Baekhyun shrugs and then slumps on the floor beside Heeyeon. When he brings out his PSP from his bag, you know he’ll be of no help tonight. Sometimes you still ask yourself why you’re still friends with him.

You curiously look around Chanyeol’s room and try to find the few missing puzzle pieces about him, knowing that there’s no place better to search than the room where spends most of his time and possibly grew up in.

There’s a small shelf with glass covers that houses action figures of all kinds and sizes—you recognize some from animes, some from comics, and some you don’t recognize at all. _Nerd_. On a part of the wall just above his study desk, the Jolly Roger of the Straw Hat Pirates from _One Piece_ hangs proudly. _Super nerd_.

You giggle when you catch sight of Rilakkuma plushies on the far side of his bed, wondering how you missed them when you first entered his room. _Cute_. Your eyes shift to his bedside table, where a baby picture of him squatting on the ground is framed. He was a chubby kid, you notice. He’s a lot thinner now, but his ears still stick out now just as they do in the picture. _Super cute_.

“Snooping around someone else’s room is rude. You know that, right?”

“I’m not snooping,” you say defensively. “I was just… looking around.”

Chanyeol flops onto his bed unceremoniously. His plushies almost falls to the floor. Poor Rilakkumas. “Well, I consider that snooping. Stop looking at my stuff and judging me.”

“I’m not judging,” you laugh as you sit down on the other side of the bed. You grab your laptop from your backpack and start it up before everyone else forgets why you’re all here in Chanyeol’s house in the first place. “I just didn’t know you were a nerd. And that you’re into stuffed animals. You truly learn something new everyday.”

“You say you’re not judging but your words are so… judgy.”

“Is that a word?”

Baekhyun yawns loudly, interrupting the conversation. “If the two of you are done flirting now, can you pass me a root beer? And yes, judgy is a word.”

The atmosphere changes after that. Chanyeol wordlessly hands Baekhyun a can, his neck and ears visibly flushing redder and redder. You know that this happens to him when he’s embarrassed, anxious, or both. Is he flustered because of what Baekhyun said?

The minutes that follow are spent in awkward silence with only the sound of keyboards clicking and Baekhyun’s tapping on his game console filling the air. You steal a quick glance at Chanyeol, who’s also typing away on his laptop. He’s not flushed anymore, but his body language is still so stiff, like he’s extra cautious about his actions.

“Baek, do you have any plans to help out or is our group paper disturbing you in your very important Tekken game?” Chanyeol sarcastically asks as he suddenly jerks his head in your direction, making you jump in your seat and quickly turn your eyes away from him.

Baekhyun doesn’t take his thumbs or eyes off his game. A few overly-enthusiastic smashes on the buttons later, he says, “Yeah, yeah. What can I do?”

“You can stop playing with that damn thing, for a start,” you say. “We need more references. Try T&F and Sage and see what you can find. And wake Heeyeon up.”

“Yes ma’am,” Baekhyun replies and finally puts away his game console. He shakes Heeyeon awake from her short-lived nap on Chanyeol’s bean bag, and the two of them begin to work on your group paper that they should have been helping with in the first place.

At around 11 p.m., the only thing left to do with the paper is to proofread it, and proofreading is assigned to you. You let the others do whatever they want for the rest of the night: Heeyeon falls asleep in a blink of an eye, Baekhyun returns to his game but follows Heeyeon’s steps not long after, and Chanyeol is softly playing his guitar.

“You’re quiet,” Chanyeol says when he notices you looking at him.

You shrug. “I’m always quiet when I’m busy doing something.”

Chanyeol doesn’t take his eyes and fingers off of the guitar. You know that he’s an amazing guitarist, but right now he’s playing sloppily, just barely making an effort to actually hold the chords down on the guitar’s neck. You recognize the tune, though.

“No you aren’t,” he says after a while. His eyes flicker to yours briefly, and the look in them tells you that something’s bothering him. “You talk from time to time even when you’re busy with something, but you’ve been quiet for most of the night. It feels weird.”

“Well…” You begin to say, scratching at the back of your neck while you choose your words. “Well, you’ve been quiet for most of the night, too,” you counter. _Defense is the best offense_.

Chanyeol sighs and stops strumming his guitar for a second. “I was just thinking… about… you know, what Baekhyun said earlier.”

Your heart catches fire at that, but you try your best to keep a straight face and look indifferent. “Which one? Baekhyun says a lot of things. It’s hard to keep track of what comes out of his mouth.”

Chanyeol looks over your shoulder to where Baekhyun and Heeyeon are sleeping. You and Heeyeon are supposed to take the bed, but since she’s already comfortable on the bean bag, perhaps it’s not a good idea to wake her. She gets really cranky when her sleep gets interrupted.

Meanwhile, Baekhyun is drooling on Chanyeol’s carpet. He’s lying stomach-down on the floor without even bothering to set up the comforters Chanyeol prepared for the two of them.

“Say what you want to say,” you tell Chanyeol when you realize that he’s checking whether Baekhyun and Heeyeon are awake. “Those two aren’t gonna wake up any time soon. They’re sleeping like logs. Their snores are even louder than your guitar.”

Chanyeol nods, but resumes softly playing his guitar for good measure. The tips of his ears are burning red, you notice, and his strumming becomes more and more careless by each second.

His Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows thickly. “I know we haven’t known each other for a long time,” he begins shakily, “but I’ve been thinking…” He trails off again. “God, why is this so hard?”

“We’ve known each other for a while now, actually. Since freshman year,” you point out, chuckling. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I knew that,” Chanyeol pouts. “What I mean is that we’ve only been, like, friends recently… A-and… Fuck,” he gives up. He reaches for something behind him, a small velvet jewelry box that looks so tiny compared to his large hands.

His fingers tremble, and when your hand brushes against him when you take the box away from him, his skin is cold.

You gingerly snap open the box, and a silver necklace rests inside. The charm glistens even in the dim lighting of Chanyeol’s room—a star embedded with small crystals. A warmth spreads across your chest and settles in the pit of your stomach. You softly trace the charm with the tip of your index finger as you wonder how something so small and simple could be so beautiful.

“I was supposed to give that to you on your birthday,” Chanyeol says. He’s still strumming away on his guitar. He continues, “But I didn’t know how to. I was overthinking the whole thing, like what should I say, what should I do. Should I act cool? What should I tell her? I was so scared.”

You smile, “It’s just a gift, Chanyeol.”

“But that’s the thing. It’s not _just_ a gift. It’s not just a necklace.”

“Then what is it?”

Chanyeol exhales deeply and stops playing, setting the guitar on his lap. “I like you,” he blurts out. “As in, you know. _That_ kind of like. Jesus, this is embarrassing. You’re gonna think that I’m crazy for liking you way too soon and now you’re gonna get mad and everything’s gonna be awkward and I’m gonna beat myself up for—”

“You’re rambling,” you say.

He covers his face with his palms and shakes his head. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. It’s okay if you hate me now or something but please—”

“I like you too,” you admit, cutting his rambling once again. “I thought it would be obvious by now.”

Chanyeol blinks rapidly. “What did you just say?”

Laughing, you shut down your laptop and place it back inside your backpack. “You have the biggest ears in this world, I think you heard me just fine,” you say. “Thank you for your late birthday present, Chanyeol. It’s beautiful. I’ll wear it everyday.”

You lay down on the bed and roll over to your side so that your back is now facing Chanyeol. You whisper good night, but really, you just don’t want him to see you smiling like a fool. You’re definitely not sleeping tonight.

But your consciousness drifts off eventually while Chanyeol plays on his guitar some more. The melody and his singing are barely audible by how soft he’s playing, but you recognize the song anyway.

“ _‘Cause it’s you and me_  
And all of the people with nothing to do  
Nothing to lose  
And it’s you and me  
And all the other people  
And I don’t know why  
I can’t keep my eyes off of you…”

The last thing that you hear before sleep wins you over is Chanyeol giddily whispering, “She likes me too.”

 

 

**_Present Day_ **

Chanyeol doesn’t take his eyes off of you throughout the whole song.

Your stomach churns as he sings while looking directly at you, and no matter how many times you avert your gaze, his eyes are still locked on you when yours travel back to him. And because of that, you know that he knows what this song means to either of you, something that you thought he would’ve forgotten.

You slowly get up from your seat and quietly make your way out of the reception. Baekhyun asks what’s wrong with a worried tone, but you assure him that you just need fresh air. He lets you go after that, though his frown doesn’t leave his lips.

For some reason, the sea breeze is colder and harsher outside of the open pavillion. You shiver as a strong gust of wind blows by, crossing your arms across your chest and rubbing your palms against your skin in an attempt to feel warmer through the friction.

You look up at the night sky once you reach the smoking area a short walk away from the reception. The moon is bright and full as it hangs low in the heavens with a myriad of stars surrounding it. You can’t remember the last time you saw the night sky like this because the lights in the city drown everything else out.

It’s beautiful, but at the same time you can’t help but feel a pang in your chest because the twinkling stars remind you of the necklace Chanyeol gave you, the one that started everything, the one you’re wearing now, the one that Chanyeol saw before he went onstage and sang that damn song. It suddenly feels like a hundred tons on your neck.

You said you’d wear it everyday, and you kept your promise. You always keep your promises, no matter when and to whom you made them.

Perhaps you should’ve left it at home and wore something else just this once, but you always had a hard time breaking habits. The silver necklace has been part of your day-to-day life for nearly three years, and it’s never easy to let go of something that has been with you for that long. Just like how hard it was to let go of Chanyeol.

But wearing the necklace really is more out of habit than of sentimentality. Sure, for the first few years after the breakup it was more of the latter, but as time went by you realized that it has become muscle memory—something your body has gotten used to, that’s it.

Come to think of it, you never really associate it with Chanyeol anymore when you wear it. It is what it is: just something that was given to you as a gift. But the look on Chanyeol’s face when he saw it around your neck earlier changes everything; it brings back all the questions that are still yet to be given an answer for all these years. It brings back everything.

You fish for your cigarette pack in your clutch bag and light yourself a stick, letting all your frustrations out together with the smoke. Instantly, you feel somewhat warmer. Smoking is another habit—a terrible one, at that—that you also have a hard time breaking away from.

Footsteps fill the still air when you’re halfway through your first cigarette. You look to where the sound is coming from and see Baekhyun walking towards you, his hands inside his pockets.

“I don’t think cigarette smoke counts as fresh air,” he says.

You take a long drag before replying, blowing the smoke away from where Baekhyun is standing because you know he doesn’t like the smell even if he never says anything about it. “You see, Baek, when people say they need fresh air, they mean they want to be alone.”

“I know,” Baekhyun shrugs, kicking at the sand underneath his feet. “I also know that wasn’t what you meant. I think you need someone to talk to.”

“I don’t have anything to talk about with you.”

Baekhyun laughs, but it sounds different. Empty. “I wasn’t talking about myself,” he clarifies. He looks at you before looking upward at the sky, and you catch an odd sadness swimming in his eyes. “You should talk to Chanyeol.”

Your cigarette is almost burned out, just enough for one more puff. You inhale the remains and toss the butt at the receptacle once you’re finished. “We don’t have anything to talk about either,” you say, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

“That’s bullshit,” Baekhyun says, and you’re taken aback by his choice of words. “I think the two of you have plenty to talk about.”

The cold creeps back into your bones at Baekhyun’s last sentence, because you know deep in your heart that it’s true. You shiver, and Baekhyun must’ve seen it because he wordlessly takes off his coat and wraps it around your shoulders.

“I don’t know what to say to him,” you admit, wrapping the coat tighter around your body. “What happened between the two of us… That happened so long ago. I’m not sure if any of that matters anymore.”

“It matters,” Baekhyun assures. “I can see it in Chanyeol’s eyes. I think he has a lot to say, but he’s not sure how to get there and how to say it. Maybe he’s not sure either whether any of it is worth talking about anymore, but I don’t think he’d be staring at you while singing if none of it matters anymore to him.”

Your hands instinctively fly up to the charm hanging on your neck, your fingers brushing against the studded star.

Baekhyun’s eyes notice your movement. Smiling, he says, “I don’t know the story behind that necklace and that old ass song he was singing, but I’m pretty sure that it has something to do with the two of you. Both of you wouldn’t be so weird about it if it didn’t matter, so I think that’s a good enough sign that the two of you should talk it over.”

“I thought Chanyeol told you everything.”

“He did, for most things,” Baekhyun nods, “but he didn’t say much about your relationship, even after you broke up. I thought that was a pretty cool thing for him to do, keeping whatever happened between just the two of you. I think he didn’t want any of us to take sides, knowing that you’re friends with us too, so he said nothing.”

Tonight’s the first time you’ve heard about that. You always assumed Baekhyun and Jongdae knew what had happened since they’re Chanyeol’s closest friends. In your case, Sehun’s always the first to know everything.

But then again, Chanyeol has always been a very private person. He shows his emotions well, but he never talks about them outright.

“He really told you nothing? About us?”

Baekhyun shakes his head. “I didn’t even know it until months later,” he says. “I asked him about you, and all he said was that you weren’t together anymore. A few weeks later I saw him posting about some other girl online. I didn’t want to ask, but Jongdae brought it up while we were having coffee one time and Chanyeol told us about her.”

Your chest tightens because you remember the day you saw that post so _vividly_. You were eating lunch with Sehun when he suddenly froze while scrolling on his phone. Eyes wide, he silently handed you his phone and tears began to fall from your eyes the moment they landed on the photo of Chanyeol with his arms around a girl, captioned with nothing but a heart. Sehun had to take you home and skip the rest of his classes because you were so out of it. It was one of the worst days of your life.

“Why didn’t you want to ask more about it?”

Baekhyun answers without hesitation, “Because I knew that whatever Chanyeol says, I’ll be pissed about it. So I never asked how the two of you broke up, how he met Chaeyoung, all that.”

You reach for another cigarette from your pack. Hearing that name—Chaeyoung—still sends your stomach roiling, and it will probably stay that way forever.

“I thought you’d understand Chanyeol, no matter what he said,” you say after lighting the stick. A stray ember of the cigarette ash falls on your arm and scalds you before dying out as soon as it touches your skin. “He’s your best friend.”

“That’s true,” Baekhyun says. “But we don’t always agree with or understand our best friends, do we? Besides, I didn’t want to take sides either. But I have to admit, Chanyeol being with Chaeyoung in just a short time after the two of you broke didn’t look good at all. I bet Sehun hates him.”

“He did,” you say, nodding as you laugh. “For quite some time. When I moved on, I guess he did too.”

“Have you really moved on, though? Do you think Chanyeol has moved on?”

Before you could say anything, a tall figure emerges from the path where Baekhyun came from. You can recognize those ears anywhere.

“Am I… interrupting something?” He asks.

Baekhyun laughs, shaking his head. “Nope. She’s all yours. I’ll head back to the reception now. The two of you can continue catching up.”

“Baek, wait,” you call out as Baekhyun begins walking back to the pavillion. He stops in his tracks and turns around. “Your coat.”

“You can return that to me tomorrow morning,” he replies. “I have a feeling that you’re still gonna need that. Tonight’s gonna be a long night.”


	2. Part Two

_“I want the two of us  
to begin everything from the beginning.”_

_(Haruki Murakami,_ [ _Norwegian Wood_ ](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11297.Norwegian_Wood) _)_

 

—

 

**_May 2006_ **

Sweat trickles down your neck as you help Chanyeol and Jongdae load the bags into the back of Baekhyun’s pickup truck. The heat is unforgiving today, much worse than usual, and for a second, a thought to forego this beach trip and just stay home and bask in your room with the air conditioning blasted on high passes through your mind.

Chanyeol’s arm brushes against yours and that thought flies away in an instant, the contact reminding you that this beach trip is also an opportunity to spend time with not just your friends but also with him outside of school. This semester has been particularly draining, too.

Baekhyun, as usual, is of no help. He’s just walking around aimlessly, belting out “Leaving On a Jet Plane” without even putting an effort in hitting the right notes.

“ _All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go. I’m standing here outside your door…_ ” Baekhyun sings, or at least tries to sing. You and Jongdae exchange knowing looks. The two of you have definitely had enough of Baekhyun’s antics. “ _...hold me like you’ll never let me go, ‘cause I’m leaving on a…_ er, on a… _red Tacoma…_ ”

“Nice adlib,” Jongdae comments flatly as he tosses Baekhyun’s duffle bag onto the cargo bed without care. He latches the door in place and taps the metal to see if it clicked.

You wipe the sweat off your forehead with the back of your hand. “I always wonder why you always sing like a cow giving birth when you’re with us,” you say to Baekhyun. “Aren’t you part of the glee club?”

“I like the look on your faces when you get annoyed,” he shrugs. “I feed off of it.”

Baekhyun’s older brother comes out of the house with a very sour expression. The keys to the Tacoma jingles in his hands as he locks the front door. He’s evidently not happy about the fact that he’s driving his little brother and his friends four hours out of town on a Saturday morning instead of sleeping in.

“Alright you little turds, let’s get this show on the road,” he says tonelessly before making his way to the driver’s seat.

“Baekbeom’s  hungover,” Baekhyun explains.

You, Chanyeol, and Jongdae climb onto the backseat of the pickup while Baekhyun takes shotgun. The Tacoma was a birthday gift from Baekhyun’s parents on his sixteenth birthday last year, but he’s yet to get his driver’s permit, so his parents made his brother drive all of you to their rest house south of town.

Baekbeom begins to drive out of their village street and onto the main road as Kyungsoo convoys behind with Heeyeon and Sehun accompanying him inside his car.

Baekhyun falls asleep the minute you enter the expressway, but compensates for the time he had his mouth shut for practically the rest of the drive. His brother’s a talker too, you learn. Perhaps it runs in the family.

“You’re quiet,” Baekbeom says out of nowhere.

Jongdae chuckles. “Oh, you don’t want her to start talking. Feelings get hurt the moment she opens her mouth—Baekhyun’s, mostly.”

Only after Jongdae’s comment do you realize that they’re talking about you. “Oh, I’m not quiet,” you say. “I’m just reserving my energy for when I beat Baekhyun’s ass—or any of your asses, for that matter—later at beer pong.”

Baekbeom laughs at that. He laughs like Baekhyun, too. “I like you,” he says.

Chanyeol stiffens from where he’s seated beside Jongdae, and Jongdae cracks up. Baekhyun supplies, “She’s taken. You’ll have to get through Chanyeol first.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Baekbeom shakes his head while chuckling. “What I meant was that I like her because she puts my little brother in his place. Baekhyun needs that often.”

“Hey!” Baekhyun protests in the passenger seat, and the car erupts into laughter.

The rest of the drive is spent in a mix of more playful banter and the occasional serious conversation about life—plans after high school, expectations about college. It feels odd talking about something that’s still far off into the future; graduation is still roughly two years away, but still, it’s a pressing question. _Will all of you still be friends then?_ After all, you’ll be juniors next semester, and junior year is usually the year when your school begins to prepare its students for college.

Jongdae’s plans are pretty laid out already: he wants to get into State U. Nothing more, nothing less. He says he’ll only apply there, and if he doesn’t get in, that’s only when he’ll try other universities. But you don’t doubt about him getting accepted into State, not even a little bit. He’s been consistently at the top of the class, even since elementary, and with that kind of track record, nothing’s really impossible.

Baekhyun, as expected, is still pretty lax about everything. He doesn’t have a particular school in mind, says he’ll just apply wherever and go into where he’s accepted. His older brother scolds him after that, saying that he should take college seriously.

“I _am_ taking it seriously!” Baekhyun counters, rubbing the spot where Baekbeom just smacked him in the head. “Just because I don’t have a target school doesn’t mean I’m dicking around. Geez. Yeol, what about you?”

Chanyeol turns away from the window, his jaw tensing. “I… I’m not sure. Isn’t it a bit early to talk about college? We’re just sophomores.”

“Well, this semester is practically over, so more or less, we’re juniors now,” Jongdae says.

Chanyeol licks his lips in uncertainty. “My grades aren’t bad…” he begins, “but they aren’t really good, either, so… I don’t know where that’ll get me. Maybe Far East, I guess? Or St. Thomas. I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Those are actually pretty okay,” Baekhyun comments as he nods. “What about you?”

Chanyeol and Jongdae turn their heads and look at you.

That question is almost too easy to answer. There’s this one school you’ve always wanted to get into, ever since you were old enough to want anything. But the thing about only having your eyes set on one thing is that the thought of not being able to achieve it is a hundred times more terrifying.

“I’ve always dreamt of studying in ULS,” you answer. “It’s the only school I ever thought of attending college at.”

“ULS…” Baekhyun says, relishing the word as it rolls over his tongue. “Now that’s a school I _never_ dreamt of going to. I’m too dumb for that kind of place.”

You roll your eyes even though Baekhyun can’t see it because you know that he’s being way too modest. His grades are okay, as far as you know. Even more than okay in some aspects. You wonder why he always downplays himself.

“That’s a really nice school,” Jongdae agrees.

“Not as nice as State,” you counter. State is the best university in the country; ULS falls in second, but somewhat still way behind. Your eyes flicker to Chanyeol for a split second. His expression is unreadable. You continue, “That’s okay, though. I’m not sure why, but even though State’s like the ‘ultimate dream’ for most, it never appealed to me.”

Jongdae shrugs, his lips curved in a smile. “Well, everyone has different dreams. Nothing wrong with that.”

Baekhyun stretches in the passenger seat, his hands almost smacking your face as you’re seated behind him. You swat his fingers away. “I actually don’t care where we all go for college,” he yawns. “I just hope we don’t all grow too far apart. You know, see and talk to each other once in a while. That’d be nice.”

Baekbeom chuckles. He’s been quiet for a while, you’ve almost forgotten that he’s here. “That’s easier said than done, Baek. Friendships tend to get complicated after high school.”

“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” Jongdae says.

“I am,” Baekbeom confirms, chuckling after he says that to mask the sadness in his tone. It’s subtle, but not hard to miss.

The car falls into silence after that. You turn to look at Chanyeol, only to see that he’s looking out the window again.

—

The Byuns’ rest house in Rolling Hills is situated on the farthest side of the province, along the wide shores that face the West Orient Sea. The neighborhood it’s in is quite far from the province capital, and what concretizes this is the peaceful silence that greets you when you step out of the car.

It’s only about two in the afternoon so the sun is still high in the sky, but the heat here is much more tolerable than it is back in town. The cool and strong breeze flying in from the open sea placates the afternoon heat and also leaves a briny yet refreshing scent in the air.

You take a good panoramic look at the shoreline, noticing that aside from the Byuns’ rest house—a two-story waterfront villa painted white and accentuated with dark blue and teal—no other houses are built on the beach.

“No neighbors?” You ask Baekbeom as he opens the cargo bed’s door to retrieve your bags.

Baekbeom shakes his head, softly chuckling. “You can’t have other people building their houses on your land now, can you?”

His words don’t immediately register in your brain. “You mean…” you begin to say, looking around the beach once more. Something finally clicks. “Wait. Your family _owns_ the entire beach?”

Baekbeom only offers an ambiguous smile and proceeds to carry two bags into the villa with Chanyeol and Jongdae following closely behind, carrying the rest of the luggage with them.

Kyungsoo’s convoy arrives a few minutes after that. Sehun’s the first to step out of the silver Honda Accord, looking oddly pale with a questionable plastic bag in his left hand. Heeyeon comes out next and rushes to let Sehun sling his arm around her shoulder, helping him walk.

Kyungsoo walks over the trunk and grabs their bags, sporting a very nauseated expression.

“What happened?” you ask, helping him carry some of the luggage.

“Sehun got carsick. I don’t think he’ll be drinking tonight,” he replies. That explains the weird liquid sloshing inside the plastic bag Sehun was holding. “We stopped by a pharmacy in the capital to buy some motion sickness medicine for him. That’s why we were a little late.”

Your face contorts in worry. “Will he be fine, though?”

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo says as he shuts the car trunk. “He just needs to rest for a little while. I’m just surprised that for a tall guy like him, he’s such a baby.”

You laugh at that, and the two of you make your way inside the villa.

The beach house is just as impressive on the inside as it is outside. The decor and furniture give off a rustic vibe, fitting for a waterfront property in the province. The house even smells like the sea, the scent of salt and fish and wood all mixing together to create this oddly comforting atmosphere that’s reminiscent of Sundays from your childhood when you would wake up to your mom cooking shrimp in sour broth, its aroma traveling throughout the house. It can pass off as a transient house for travelers in your opinion, and you wonder if the Byuns let people rent it when they’re not home.

When everyone is settled in the living room and Sehun is helped to a room upstairs to rest, Baekbeom lays out some simple house rules, mostly about not destroying the house. The caretakers have been instructed not to check on the house for the weekend in order to give the rest of you some privacy, he explains.

“I’m not supposed to be tolerating underage drinking, but…” he begins to say before Baekhyun interrupts him.

“You’re literally the epitome of underage drinking. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that wild New Year’s party when you were—”

Baekbeom glares at his brother. He continues, “I wasn’t finished. As I was saying, I’m not supposed to be tolerating underage drinking, _but_ … I told Mr. Nam to stock the fridge with beer because I’m such a great big brother.”

“That’s not it,” Baekhyun says.

Baekbeom sighs, rolling his eyes. “And I also know that I can’t stop you from drinking anyway, so what the hell.”

“There you go.”

After giving out a few more reminders, Baekbeom leaves the house to drive back to the capital before heading back to town to stop by and check on their coffee shop as instructed by their parents. During the four-hour drive, the siblings explained how their family owns the oldest café in Rolling Hills, priding themselves on being the forerunner of the _varraco_ coffee industry in the province, which is considered one of the best local coffee variants in the country.

“Dad’s going to pick you up Sunday night, okay?” Baekbeom reminds Baekhyun as the latter practically shoves the former out the door. “No night swimming at the beach, drink responsibly, there are condoms in my room if you ever need one…” he rants, but you doubt that Baekhyun’s listening to any of them. “Please don’t burn the house down,” is the last thing he says before Baekhyun shuts the door in his face.

After his brother’s gone, Baekhyun goes ahead and sets room assignments for the night. There are six bedrooms in the villa: Baekhyun’s, Baekbeom’s, their parents’ room, and three other guest rooms. Obviously, Baekhyun’s parents’ room is out of the question, which leaves five rooms available.

The decision to let Sehun use one of the guest rooms on his own is unanimous, as no one wants to be puked on. You and Heeyeon get to have each of the remaining guest rooms while Jongdae crashes with Baekhyun in his room and Kyungsoo and Chanyeol ‘borrows’ Baekbeom’s room.

The rest of the afternoon is spent resting from the long drive. You take a long, hot shower as soon as you settle in your room, your tensed muscles from being cramped in a car for four hours relaxing under the steam.

The odd look on Chanyeol’s face when you were talking about college during the drive resurfaces in your mind, and you struggle to understand what it means. He seemed worried about something, but what could that possibly be? You’ve been dating him for almost half a year now and yet you still find yourself having a hard time reading him.

Just as you step out of the bathroom wrapped in only just a towel, a knock resonates through the bedroom door.

Wondering who it might be, you carefully hide yourself from behind it as you open it, only to find a very unnerved-looking Chanyeol standing on the other side.

“Hi,” he says nervously. “C-can I… come in?”

Out of worry, you immediately say yes, temporarily forgetting that you didn’t have any proper clothes on. You only realize that when Chanyeol quickly averts his gaze, attempting and failing to get words out of his mouth as he points to the towel wrapped around your body.

“Oh. Oh! Shit,” you panic, quickly running to your duffle bag to retrieve some clothes before disappearing into the bathroom to dress up.

When you get back, Chanyeol’s sitting on the bed as he looks around the room. He looks like a kid, his big eyes gleaming with wonder at everything it falls on. You catch him looking at you like that sometimes, and every time you do, it makes you fall in love with him all over again.

“Sorry about that,” you apologize sheepishly as you walk towards him.

“It’s okay,” Chanyeol says. “Here, let me dry your hair.” He takes the hair towel from your hands and gestures you to sit in front of him on the bed. “I mean, it’s more than okay. It’s a nice view.”

“Do you want me to smack you?”

Chanyeol laughs, and he sounds like himself again, far from the nervous wreck he was just a few minutes ago when he was knocking on your door. “I was joking.”

“Sure you were.”

“Okay, I was _half_ joking. It is a nice view.”

You turn around and tackle Chanyeol on the bed, the hair towel falling out of his hand and landing on the floor. You tickle him on his sides while forcing him to take back what he said. He begs you to stop, tears forming in his eyes from all his laughter. When he’s had enough, he firmly grips both of your wrists and pushes you from straddling him and onto the bed, your back bouncing once after it hits the mattress.

“I told you to stop,” Chanyeol says. The smile on his lips melts away when he realizes the position you’re in.

He stares at you. You stare back. Your heartbeat rises up to your ears and all you can hear is its wild thrashing against your chest, making it difficult for you to breathe.

Chanyeol licks his lips and swallows thickly. His eyes still hasn’t left yours, and you’ve lost count on how many seconds the two of you have been like this, waiting for either one to say something or make a move.

The room suddenly feels hot—too hot, and you clearly remember turning the air conditioning on before taking a shower.

“I—”

“I—”

You and Chanyeol say at the same time.

“Nevermind,” Chanyeol whispers as he lets go of your wrists, climbing off the bed to retrieve the hair towel on the floor. “Come here. Let’s dry your hair.”

You sit up and crawl to the foot of the bed. Chanyeol covers the tips of your hair with the towel and begins rubbing gently. It’s oddly relaxing.

“I used to do this to my sister when she’s sick,” Chanyeol says after a few minutes of silence. “The funny thing is, she gets sick almost all the time. It’s like she’s my little sister instead of the other way around.”

Chanyeol doesn’t see it, but the little story makes you smile. It must be nice to have someone to grow up with. You never had a problem growing up alone, but stories like that make you wonder how nice it could’ve been to have someone like that—someone to do little things for you, even as little as drying your hair when you’re sick, instead of doing everything on your own and figuring out stuff alone.

“That’s sweet,” you say. “I wish I had someone like that.”

“You do now,” Chanyeol replies, his voice coming out almost a whisper.

It’s because he knows. He knows that you’re mostly by yourself because your mom spends more time at work than she does at home while your dad and only brother are trying to make a living outside of the country. He knows how lonely coming home feels like for you, how you walk into your house at the end of every day to nothing but the echo of your own voice.

Sometimes you think that your friends know you better than your family ever will, because they aren’t even there to know more about you.

Chanyeol’s fingers continue to weave through your locks, gently squeezing water out of the strands and into the towel. “I’m not going anywhere, you know. I’ll be here as long as you need me.”

His words cause anxiety to bubble in your chest. “Listen, Yeol. About ULS…”

“Stop,” he says. “If you end up going, I’m more than okay with it. That’s your dream school. I’ll support you through anything. We’ll all be going to different places after high school, anyway. It’s gonna be fine.”

You turn around to face him and take the hair towel from his hand. “I can—”

“Whatever you’re going to say, stop,” Chanyeol cuts you off, placing his right palm on your cheek. He softly brushes your skin with his thumb and repeats, “It’s gonna be fine.” His eyes seem like they’re sparkling as he looks at you. “We have two whole years before graduation. Let’s cross the bridge when we get there.”

“Okay,” you finally give in, leaning further into his touch.

Your eyes flicker to Chanyeol’s lips as he licks them. “I…” he begins, “Can I… I really want to kiss you right now. I wanted to kiss you five minutes ago, but…”

You smile and lean towards him, connecting your lips to his. Chanyeol’s shock soon melts away as he relaxes into the kiss. Somewhere in between, you feel his lips curve into a smile.

 

 

**_Present Day_ **

The music from the reception grows fainter as you and Chanyeol walk farther down the beach. Baekhyun’s coat hugs your shoulders and shields you from the chilly night, and a tug in your heart tells you that he’s right about tonight being a long one.

“Do you remember Baekhyun’s seventeenth birthday?” Chanyeol asks out of the blue.

Your heart jumps at Chanyeol’s sudden question. “Not really,” you lie. _Of course you remember_. That’s a stupid question, even for Chanyeol. “That was… What? Eleven years ago?”

Chanyeol chuckles as he loosens his tie. He corrects, “Twelve, actually. That was in 2006.”

Twelve years. That’s basically a lifetime ago. The funny thing is, you remember almost everything about that weekend—the Byuns’ beach house in Rolling Hills, Heeyeon’s drunken confession to Kyungsoo, your first kiss…

You try to shake that particular memory off your mind.

“Okay… what about it?” You question, attempting your best to sound disinterested.

A strong gust of wind blows over the beach, causing Chanyeol’s perfectly styled hair to ruffle. He looks exactly like he did twelve years ago, when the two of you woke up early to look for shells that the waves cast up while the rest of your friends still slept back in the villa, recovering from all the beer they consumed the night before.

You remember Chanyeol looking absolutely beautiful then, even more beautiful than the sunrise and the seashells the two of you were collecting, his dark messy hair blowing with the breeze and his smile outshining the sun.

He’s still beautiful right now as you walk side by side on the shore underneath the moonlight. It’s odd how nothing has changed, but at the same time, everything has.

“Whenever I’m at the beach, my mind always travels back to that weekend, even if I don’t want it to,” Chanyeol says.

“You must have really loved Baekhyun’s party.”

“Yeah, well… That’s not the only thing I really loved.”

You stop in your tracks. A chill runs through your spine and into your heart, and suddenly Baekhyun’s borrowed coat isn’t enough to keep you warm.

Chanyeol’s steps come to a halt when he’s realized that you’ve fallen behind. Confusion paints his face when he sees your pained expression. He slowly walks back towards you, his hands tucked inside his pockets, and asks, “Why…?”

“That’s not fair.”

“What?”

Chanyeol reaches out to touch you but you flinch away, his hand freezing midair before slowly falling back to his side.

“You can’t say things like that,” you say. Your heart suddenly feels too heavy for your chest to hold _._ “This isn’t… We’re not the same people anymore, Yeol. We haven’t talked to each other in ten years. Hell, we haven’t _seen_ each other in ten years. You can’t go around and say shit  like nothing happened. It’s not fair.”

Chanyeol freezes from where he’s standing. He opens his mouth as if to explain himself, but decides against it at the last minute.

Instead, he says, “I’m sorry.” Chanyeol walks away from you and sits on the sand, hugging his knees in front of him. “Listen,” he starts, “I just thought… I want to make things right. We never talked about what happened, but I want to now. I’m sorry if that came out too sudden, but…” he falters, lowering his head and running his hands through his hair. “I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought about you through all these years.”

You take small, calculated steps towards him. Ignoring what he just said, you say, “You’re gonna get your suit dirty. Stand up. Let’s head back to the reception.”

Chanyeol shakes his head petulantly like a kid. “I don’t want to go back,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere until we talk.”

“We _are_ talking. Plus, this isn’t about us. This is Kyungsoo’s wedding, not some high school reunion where we can talk about what or what didn’t happen in the past. He’s probably looking—”

Chanyeol interrupts you by practically shoving his phone on your face, the light from the screen temporarily blinding you. When your vision focuses, you see a string of text messages from Kyungsoo.

**[ Kyungsoo / 22:34 ]  
** _Did you find her?_

**[ Kyungsoo / 22:37 ]  
** _Baekhyun just told me you’re talking to her right now._

**[ Kyungsoo / 22:38 ]  
** _Please don’t fuck it up this time._

“What…”

Chanyeol pockets back his phones and looks up at you expectantly, tapping the sand beside him, urging you to sit next to him. You stare at him blankly for a few seconds before finally giving in.

The sand feels foreign under your weight. You can’t remember the last time you’ve been to a beach, partly because you were always too busy to go, but mostly because beaches also remind you of Chanyeol, like he always associates the seaside with Baekhyun’s seventeenth. But you’re never going to admit that to him.

“So…” you begin, “you’re all in on this?”

“Maybe,” Chanyeol cryptically answers. You shoot him a glare and he finally admits, “Okay, fine. Yes. It wasn’t like that at first. But when Kyungsoo told me you were coming… I guess I reacted differently than they expected. So the guys told me that maybe we should try and patch things up here. Maybe ten years is a long enough time to hold a grudge, don’t you think?”

You tuck your feet under your thighs so that you’re now sitting cross-legged, the sand shifting along with your legs. You take Baekhyun’s coat off your shoulders and use it to cover your legs. Chanyeol’s eyes fall once more on the necklace he gave you on your sixteenth birthday, almost a month before the two of you officially started being together. You try to ignore his gaze on your neck.

“I’m not holding a grudge against you,” you say. That’s the truth. “I’m not mad at you. Not anymore, at least. Sometimes… I still feel bad about what happened, but that’s it. I guess… I guess as the years went by, I kind of understood where you were coming from, that we’re both accountable for the shitfest that was our relationship.”

“Shitfest’s probably too strong of a word to describe it, isn’t it?” Chanyeol asks, soliciting a soft chuckle from you.

The tension from just a few minutes ago has dissolved just as quickly as it formed. Chanyeol has a way of turning the most intense situations into something so light with just a few words. Charm speak, you used to call it, a nod to your favorite book.

“You said the guys suggested we patch things up tonight,” you say. Chanyeol nods. “By the guys, you mean…”

“Oh, everyone,” he replies quickly. “Kyungsoo, Jongdae, Baekhyun, Sehun…”

 _Oh Sehun, that little piece of shit_ , you say quietly to yourself. That was why he was asking earlier if Chanyeol had arrived or not. Sneaky little bastard.

“You know Sehun hated you so much when we broke up. He was so dramatic about it,” you recall, laughing as you do. “He saw you one time at a Starbucks in North Avenue and texted me saying that he felt like vomiting when his eyes landed on you. He acted like he was the one you broke up with. It was hilarious.”

Chanyeol rests his hands on his sides, his fingers digging into the sand. He’s not laughing at what you just said as you expected, but a sliver of a smile plays across his lips. “That, I was well aware of,” he says. “I got an earful from him when Baekhyun told him about my plan of talking to you at Kyungsoo’s wedding, saying that I—and I quote—was a complete asshole that was so full of myself to think that I deserved to speak to you after all the shit I put you through.”

“Like I said, he was dramatic.”

“You’re gonna laugh at this, but out of all the people I could’ve been jealous of when we were together, Sehun was always on top of the list.”

You let out a hysterical laugh, surprising Chanyeol and yourself as well. It’s probably the most genuine laugh you’ve let out all evening. After getting over his surprise, Chanyeol laughs along too.

“You do know that he’s…”

“Gay?” Chanyeol asks, and you nod. “I didn’t know until recently. When Baekhyun told me that, I suddenly regretted all those times I wished Sehun would randomly trip over his feet when he’s walking because I was so jealous of him being with you all the time.”

You brush off grains of sand that strayed onto Baekhyun’s coat. “It’s okay. I’ve been friends with him since we were in fifth grade and I only confirmed that he was gay when we were like… I don’t know, twenty, I guess? I mean, I had a hunch when we were kids, but I didn’t want to make hasty assumptions.”

Chanyeol shakes his head in guilt, sighing as he does. “I wish I knew that sooner. Maybe I couldn’t have thought of all those horrible things about him.”

“I can’t believe you were jealous of Sehun,” you say. “Oh Sehun. He literally grew up with me. There was literally no reason for you to be jealous of him. He’s like a brother I never had.”

“Yeah, I regret that now,” Chanyeol says, flattening his legs parallel to the sand. His suit’s _definitely_ getting ruined. You feel bad for whoever’s dry cleaning it. “How about you? Did you regret anything when you were with me?”

And there it is again, the weird tension in the air that makes the air colder than it should be. Talking about the past can be fun, cathartic at times, but somehow, talking about your past _with_ Chanyeol still doesn’t come as easy as you thought it would be.

“No,” you finally say after a few seconds of considering whether you should lie or not, settling for the truth as you feel like you’ve told enough lies for the night. “I don’t regret anything. I don’t regret you.”

 

 

**_January 2007_ **

“You know, for a guy that plays basketball in real life, you suck at 2K.”

Chanyeol scoffs and rolls his eyes. “I think there’s something wrong with your controller,” he complains, waving the controller in the air as if that supports his point.

The Cavaliers are up 88 to 79 against the Spurs with a little over less than five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. You inbound the ball from Gooden to Gibson, and when the guard is barely through the halfcourt line, you make him throw a pass to James, who’s preparing to drive into the basket while Chanyeol’s other players are still focused on Gibson. Easy two.

“That’s not fair,” Chanyeol pouts. He’s adorable when he’s a sore loser, but he’s a loser nonetheless.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have picked the Spurs.”

“Your controller’s wack,” he insists.

It’s now 90 to 79 on the scoreboard, three minutes remaining on the game clock. Chanyeol’s team has possession. He inbounds the ball with Duncan, or at least attempts to, but you use intercept the pass with James, running at full speed at the opposite side of the court once you’ve completed the pass. Fastbreak. Another easy two.

“You’re gonna lose,” you singsong. “You’re down thirteen points and it’s almost crunch time.”

You could feel Chanyeol sighing as your head is resting on his chest. He’s frustrated, that, you’re sure of. You just hope that he doesn’t throw a tantrum this time, unlike the last time you owned his ass in this game.

Chanyeol calls for a timeout. “Maybe if you stopped using LeBron, we’d have a fair game.”

“I didn’t even use him in the play I did before your sloppy ass Duncan failed to pass,” you point out. “And besides, why wouldn’t I use him? He’s part of the roster for a reason.”

The timeout ends. Chanyeol successfully completes the inbound this time, and surprisingly lands a quick three from Ginobili, who was just waiting in the corner.

Chanyeol looks so happy about raising his team’s score to 82 as if that makes any difference in the outcome of this game that you couldn’t even find it in yourself to feel bad about not being able to guard the basket.

Just a minute and a half remain in the game and you plan to waste as much time as you can after the inbound because whatever the case, your team wins.

Before the simulated referee even gives the ball to your forward to inbound and start the clock, Chanyeol turns your head away from the TV screen by using his fingers to tilt your chin towards him and kisses you out of the blue.

Your surprise fades away and you relax into the kiss, temporarily forgetting that your team has possession. _Fuck the possession_ , your mind screams at you. Chanyeol’s lips are more important than the game, and your team’s winning anyway.

Chanyeol ends the kiss just as abruptly as he began it, cheering when he sees your forward being called for a five-second violation.

“That’s cheating,” you flatly remark.

“No, it’s called _diversion_ ,” Chanyeol counters, sticking his tongue out like a five-year-old. “It’s your fault you let your guard down.”

You sit straight up and let the controller sit on your lap, letting the game finish itself while Chanyeol does whatever he wants as your team just dumbly stands there. Chanyeol scores a buzzer beater from the perimeter before the game ends at 92 to 84.

“I won anyway.”

Chanyeol laughs, hugging you from behind. He rests his chin at the juncture of your neck and shoulder and says, “I won too. I got to kiss you.”

“That’s still cheating,” you complain.

Chanyeol hums as he nuzzles further into your neck, leaving small kisses over the expanse of exposed skin from your sweater. The contact elicits goosebumps from you and you unconsciously tilt your head to the side, inviting him in.

A notification pops up on the TV screen, indicating that you’ve been playing for a while now and suggesting that you take a break. The sound from the notification reels you back into reality. You move slightly away from Chanyeol so that his lips leave your neck.

You begin to stand up from the couch as you say, “Let’s take a break. I’ll get some food downstairs. What do you want? I think we have frozen fries in the fridge. I can fry some.”

“Let’s just… stay here,” Chanyeol says, his voice coming out huskily and quietly. He reaches for your hand and slowly pulls you closer to him.

He looks up at you and you see something swirling in his eyes. You can’t pinpoint what that is, but it somehow leaves your throat dry. Chanyeol soothes the back of your hand with his thumb and the gentle touch spreads warmth from your hand throughout your entire body.

Chanyeol reaches for your other hand, pulling you further in until you climb back onto the couch with your thighs straddling him.

“I… Can I kiss you?” he whispers. He tucks your hair behind your ear, his hand moving downward after doing so and cupping your chin.

You laugh. He always looks so cute when he asks you that. You place your hands on either side of his shoulders, his muscles firm against your palm. “You didn’t need permission when you kissed me a few minutes ago, so why are you asking now?”

You could feel Chanyeol’s heart pulsing against your palms, like his whole body is beating along with it. He swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his throat, and with a shaky breath, he manages to say, “Because if you say yes, I don’t think I can control myself after that. I don’t want to start something that both of us will end up regretting, so I need to ask you first.”

Chanyeol’s touch on your chin suddenly feels hot as you consider what he just said. You know exactly what he means, and you also know that deep down, somewhere in your subconscious, that you want the same thing he’s asking from you right now.

The air becomes perfectly still. The only sound that can be heard is your controlled breaths, as if the two of you are preventing yourselves from hyperventilating.

Chanyeol doesn’t say anything, still waiting for you to answer his question. His eyes have traveled every inch of your face by the time you open your mouth to reply, his face beaming in anticipation.

“Do you have a… You know.”

Chanyeol chuckles as he nods, biting his lip in an effort to stop himself from laughing too much. “Yeah,” he says. “You need to give me more credit. I don’t think with just my dick.”

You rest your head on his shoulder to hide your embarrassed expression. “Sorry,” you laugh, shaking your head in shame. When you look up back at him, only a ghost of a smile remains on Chanyeol’s lips. The yearning and anticipation return to his eyes.

“So, is that a yes?”

You were only halfway into nodding when Chanyeol crashes his lips against yours, your body instantly gravitating closer and closer to him until you’re chest is pressed firmly against him. His hands rest at the bottom of your spine, just above your ass, keeping you safely seated on top of his thighs.

Chanyeol slightly bites into your lower lip, educing a strangled whimper from your throat. Your body feels like it’s on fire. Chanyeol’s hands slide from your back down to your hips and he bucks you in closer to him so that your core is directly pressing against his hard-on. Your legs buckle at the contact. Another moan escapes your lips.

“Fuck,” Chanyeol rasps against your mouth when he breaks the kiss. “You sound like music to my ears.”

His words set you on fire even more, as if you aren’t already burning out. Even after over a year of being together, this is the farthest the two of you have gone in terms of being intimate.

You inhale sharply when Chanyeol suddenly stands up, holding your thighs firmly as your legs instinctively wrap around tightly around his waist. He captures your lips in a heated kiss once more and you gladly follow suit. With your mouths locked, he carries you into your room.

Chanyeol gently sets you on the bed. His lips don’t leave yours even as he adjusts his body to hover over yours, careful not to put too much weight on you. His hands travel under your sweater, his fingers skimming lightly on your sides. His touch is as soft as a feather, your skin tingling at every curve he traces on your waist.

He slowly begins to lift your shirt up but then you hesitate, your hands flying down to stop him almost immediately. He pulls his lips away from yours as a confused expression forms in his face.

“I’m… I’m shy.”

Chanyeol smiles gently. He lands a soft peck on your cheek and then whispers in your ear, “Don’t be. You’re perfect.”

Your hands ease up on him and he takes the opportunity to discard the fabric off of you. He throws your top somewhere in the room. His eyes rake down on your newly exposed figure, his breath hitching in his throat as he does.

“Beautiful,” he whispers, sending heat across your face.

Without hesitation, he sucks at your breast. Your back arches from arousal. Chanyeol’s left hand is firm on your waist as he holds you down, his other hand cupping and kneading and causing you to start to get dizzy.

You let out a breathy sigh when his lips leave your chest. Chanyeol straightens back up to peel his shirt off, tossing it in the direction where your sweater flew off to. He begins undoing his jeans, everything else coming off with it.

Your cheeks flush when you catch sight of his cock, hot and swollen with translucent liquid forming at the tip. Chanyeol smirks at you when he notices where your eyes are.

“Like what you see?”

You shoot him a blank look, trying your best to control your expression. “You’re getting cocky right now. In every sense of the word.”

Chanyeol laughs as he toes off his jeans and retrieves a square red plastic packet. He rips it open quickly, discarding the packaging on the floor. He better pick that up later.

He pumps himself a few times for good measure before slipping the rubber on him. He hovers back above you and kisses you deeply. Pushing your panties aside, his fingers travel down your core in the middle of the kiss, your entire body shuddering when his middle finger begins to run up and down your lips.

He coats you in your own slickness, and when he thinks it’s enough, he slowly pushes a finger in.

Your insides stretch to accommodate Chanyeol’s digit, letting out a loud mewl when he manages to bury half of it inside you. What surprises you is that it doesn’t hurt. It just feels weird, having something foreign sliding inside of you.

Chanyeol pulls away from the kiss briefly to gauge your expression as he begins to gradually slide it inside and out. The friction and the sounds coming from it cause you to roll your eyes in pleasure. Chanyeol’s mouth then finds its way to your neck, sucking at the sensitive skin.

He pushes a second finger in, and this time, you feel the sting. You bite your lip to keep the groan from escaping your lips and dig your fingers into Chanyeol’s arm to steady yourself. He repeats the whole process but with two fingers this time, and when he sees you relaxing, he pulls out his digits.

Chanyeol sucks at his fingers that were just inside of you. The sight makes you feel feverish. A whine involuntarily comes out of your lips.

He leans towards you and softly says, “Tell me if it hurts, okay?”

You nod. He places one last kiss on your lips before lining himself up at your entrance. Your heart feels like it’s about to leap out of your chest.

Chanyeol pushes in. Slowly, gently. You both moan at the contact. The stretch feels okay at first, and then feels too much all of a sudden.

Chanyeol notices your wince and he stops driving in. “You okay?” he asks. You nod as you bite your lip. Chanyeol has the nerve to chuckle. “It’s not even halfway in.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s the whole point of this thing.”

You laugh at that, but then your laugh turns into a whimper when Chanyeol draws back and pushes back in up until the point where he stopped, the drag causing your back to curve upward.

Chanyeol uses the opportunity to suck at your breast once more. The subdued whimper grows into a loud, airy moan.

“Good?” Chanyeol asks. You nod, your eyes shut in pleasure.

Chanyeol sheathes the rest of him inside of you gradually and carefully. The ache comes, but you hold it in. You _want_ the ache. You want to squeeze him in further and further. Chanyeol stops when he’s finally deep inside.

“Does it hurt?”

“A little,” you admit, but you offer a reassuring smile. You catch Chanyeol’s lips in a kiss and he takes the hint—he begins to thrust.

The stretch from Chanyeol’s cock feels like something was about to burst open inside of you, but the pain gets lost along with your coherent thoughts when Chanyeol settles into a steady rhythm.

He peppers your neck with kisses as he thrusts over and over, the slow rotation of his hips driving you crazy. He mutters compliments in between his strokes and moans. Somewhere in between, he hits something inside of you that makes you roll your head back. You clench around him unintentionally, messing up his rhythm as he buckles undone on top of you.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he curses, the emphasis of the word hanging in the air. “You feel so good.”

Chanyeol’s voice comes out rough, barely tumbling out of his lips, and you reply with nothing but unintelligible murmurs when what you really want to say is that he’s driving you crazy and that he feels so full inside of you and that you don’t think you can last much longer when he’s moving like that. Soon, his stable thrusts turn clumsy as he nears his climax. You break before he does, and it feels as if your body has reached its boiling point because all you could feel from head to toe is _heat heat heat_ and your legs go numb as your mind goes blank.

It doesn’t take him long to follow, not when your walls are spasming and clamping down on him, and he finally bursts, his cock pulsing inside of you while his arms give out from his weight.

Another wave of heat registers in your senses, this time concentrated in your core, and you know that it’s from Chanyeol spilling inside the condom.

You both look at each other with a haphazard of shock and lust painted on your faces.

“It’s… hot,” you both say simultaneously, breaking into a soft chuckle afterwards.

“We’re so cute,” you say ironically. Chanyeol laughs and kisses you one last time before pulling out and standing up from the bed. He peels a page from the notebook sitting at your desk and wraps the condom with it before throwing it in the bin under the table.

You made the stupid decision to stand up immediately after you just had sex—your first experience, at that—and your legs wobble as you walk to the bathroom. Your thighs burn when you sit on the toilet.

“Did you have to go all this time?” Chanyeol asks. He leans against the doorframe of the bathroom, a curious smile on his lips. “You could’ve just told me.”

You laugh and shake your head. “No. I just read somewhere that women should pee after they have sex.”

“Oh,” he says. “That actually makes a lot of sense. It’s smart. You’ve always been Miss Smarty Pants.”

After washing up and putting on a fresh pair of panties, you walk back to the bed where Chanyeol’s already sprawled on. His eyes still look clouded. Maybe yours does too.

You watch him silently as you lean back on the wall with your hands folded across your bare chest, and you think about how much you love the boy laying on your bed with his face still in a daze. It scares you sometimes, how you trust Chanyeol so much—trust him to come to your house when your parents aren’t around, trust him to play video games with you when you won’t even let your dad touch the Xbox he bought you, trust him enough to see you naked, trust him completely to be your first.

You wonder if you’ll regret all of this someday. But how can you regret something that you wanted in the first place? How can you regret something that made you happy, something that redefined happiness for you?

“Okay, creep,” Chanyeol snaps you out of your thoughts, his lazy smile inviting you to crawl into bed and cuddle with him in all your postcoital afterglow. “Stop staring at me.”

 _No_ , you decide. _I won’t regret this. I won’t regret him. That’s for sure_.

 

 

**_Present Day_ **

Regret isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Chanyeol.

No. A multitude of things come before that.

Despite how it all went down, good memories always resurface first before the bad ones. Chanyeol has hurt you in more ways than he can realize, and the pain will always be there when he crosses your mind, but not even that great amount of pain can erase how he was one of the few things that kept you anchored and safe when you felt like it was you against everything else.

Chanyeol was midnight phone calls. He was rose petals. He was sunrises and sunsets. He was Blink-182 and Kamikazee songs sung usually off-key but you forgave him for it each and every time. He was lazy afternoons spent sprawled on the living room sofa playing 2K and getting overly competitive. He was soft kisses exchanged after sex. He was the shoulder you cried on when you were just shy of 0.16 points from making it to the honors list in the first quarter of senior year. He was your youth. He was everything.

You know he never really was good with words, but still, you think about how he would describe you—if he associates you with so many things like you do to him. If he does at all.

Are the bad memories the first that comes to mind when he remembers you? Is it regret?

The unanswered questions just keep piling up even ten years later, adding to the long list of things you never got the answer to and probably never will, so you just ask them to yourself and formulate an answer that will satisfy you for the time being until these questions come back to haunt you at four in the morning as you lay in your room enveloped in darkness and uncertainty.

“How ‘bout you?” you ask, your small voice cutting into the silence with a big question. “Did you regret me?”

“Of course not,” Chanyeol replies, “I told you that, some time after we broke up. I said that you were one of the best things that ever happened to me. I couldn’t have said that if I felt regretful.”

 _Did you regret breaking up with me?_ You want to ask. It’s one of the questions that you’d kill to get an answer to, but at the same time, you know deep in your heart that perhaps it’s best if you never get to hear his explanation for it.

You look at Chanyeol. He’s staring straight ahead into the sea, gazing at nothing but darkness beyond the part where the sand and sea meet.

The tone of his voice radiates sincerity, yet looking at him, you realize that you still can’t see through him even after all those years of friendship. Even after growing up with him. Even after everything.

“What did you want to talk about, Yeol?”

“Everything,” he replies without even thinking about it. “I always wondered what happened to you after you ignored my last birthday message. After you cut me off from your life. I know it sounds selfish, because I’m the one that broke up with you, but you’ve been a big part of my life and I just can’t… I can’t lie to myself and act like I don’t care about you anymore because I do. I think I’ll always care about you, no matter how hard I try not to.”

Maybe the two of you are more alike than you thought.

“Why now, though? Why now, after all these years?”

Chanyeol looks up at the sky, biting his lips as he does. “I didn’t know how to reach out to you. I thought that maybe it was an asshole move to message you out of nowhere and ask how you’re doing after all that happened. And… I don’t know. We were living different lives and I wasn’t sure if I should barge into yours after all the shit I’ve done.” He turns his head to you. “I guess using Kyungsoo’s wedding as an excuse to talk to you again felt more natural because everyone’s seeing each other again after a long time and the past will be brought into conversations eventually so I thought, why not?”

He was scared.

That’s what he’s trying to tell you, and you understood it the moment he opened his mouth to answer your question, because he said all the things that you’re afraid of saying.

This is the most that Chanyeol has opened up to you as far as his feelings are concerned, you realize. It’s a pity that he wasn’t like this ten years ago. Maybe that would’ve changed something.

But you’re way past blaming him for what happened. Growing apart from him really put things in perspective, including the fact that you weren’t as healthy for him as you thought you were. Everyone’s a victim of self-destructive behavior and you’re not exempt from it. The only problem with that is people tend to realize it only when it blows up in their faces and after they’ve ended up hurting others and themselves in the process.

“I’m sorry, Yeol,” you whisper. Your eyes are locked on his and his to yours. It feels good, saying it to him personally and actually meaning it. “I’m sorry if somewhere along the way I’ve been a toxic person in your life. And I know I’ve been. I know that now.”

Chanyeol doesn’t say anything. He never does, when you apologize to him. And you know that it’s because he’s not used to it, because he’s used to being the one who says sorry—because you rarely do. Apologizing has never been your strongest suit because you never liked to admit when you’ve fucked up; another self-destructive behavior you’re trying to grow out of.

You guess that’s why Chanyeol’s explanations for breaking up with you came out as apologies rather than explanations themselves.

“You ever asked yourself where did we go wrong?”

You scoff. Of course you did. You still do, and it’s been ten years. “I’ve asked myself that a million times. To be honest, I think it was ULS that did it. Or, you know, college in general. Remember what Baekbeom said to us?”

“Friendships tend to get complicated after high school,” Chanyeol recalls. “Yeah, I remember.”

 

 

**_March 2008_ **

The minutes passed by excruciatingly slowly with each _tick_ of the clock at the corner of Chanyeol’s room. You drum your fingers against your thigh as you stare at the timepiece, each second seemingly arriving slower than the last. Waiting feels like forever.

Chanyeol is relaxed on his bed, absentmindedly playing on his guitar. He’s looking at you curiously, like he’s amused, and the corner of his lips curl into a small smile when he thinks you’re not looking.

“Don’t make fun of me.”

Chanyeol raises his eyebrows. “I’m not,” he says, not lifting his fingers off the strings. “I would never. I like living and breathing, and if I make fun of you, I don’t get to continue doing either of them. I know better.”

“You were smiling. It’s annoying.”

Chanyeol laughs and finally sets his guitar aside. He stands up from the bed and makes his way towards his desk where you’re seated, kissing you as soon as he’s close enough. You relax as his lips move against yours.

You let out a sigh when he pulls away. He tucks your hair behind your ear and lands a soft kiss on your forehead, and most of your worry melts away in an instant.

“I was smiling because I thought you’re getting worried over nothing.” Chanyeol’s voice is softer than his touch on your cheek right now. “You’re the smartest girl ever. You don’t have to worry about getting into ULS because you will.”

Your phone alarm goes off as if right on cue, signaling that university admission results are finally out. Chanyeol turns off the alarm and looks at you reassuringly. He kisses you again when he notices your hands trembling.

“Do you want to check yours now, or…”

“Can we check yours first?” you ask with a small voice. “I don’t think I’m ready to see mine yet.”

Chanyeol nods and then proceeds to open his e-mail on his laptop sitting atop the desk. He looks calm as he types away, as if the e-mails that he’s about to check aren’t going to affect a huge chunk of his future. You wish you were as relaxed as him, because right now your heart feels like it’s going to eat itself inside your chest.

Two new e-mails sit on top of Chanyeol’s inbox: one from Far East, the other from St. Thomas—the only two universities he applied for. He opens the one that got sent earlier.

> _Dear Mr. Park,_
> 
> _Thank you for your application for admission to Saint Thomas University. The Admissions Committee has carefully reviewed your application and we regret that the University cannot offer you a place in the 2008 freshman class._

“I was expecting that,” he says.

You look at Chanyeol to gauge his expression, but he just looks relieved, like he’s glad St. Thomas is over and done with. He closes the e-mail, takes a deep breath, and then clicks the only unread one remaining in his inbox.

> _Dear Mr. Park,_
> 
> _Congratulations! We are delighted to offer you admission to the University of the Far East in Civil Engineering for the First Semester, June 2008 as a freshman. Your hard work and determination have earned you a spot in the Far East Class of 2012! We wish to extend you a warm welcome and best wishes for your success at the University._

Chanyeol freezes. He reads the entire thing again and again and again, as if he doesn’t seem to believe what he’s looking at. Chanyeol blinks a few more  times. He still hasn’t said anything. His face is still blank.

“Yeol,” you smile, “you got into Far East.”

Your words somehow click Chanyeol’s mind back into place and his lips gradually form into a grin. He reads the letter again, this time the words registering in his brain, and he yells out in happiness, causing his sister to run to his room.

“Chanyeol, I’m studying for my midterms right now and I swear to God if you don’t shut up right now, I will—”

“Yoora,” you cut her off as you chuckle, “he got accepted into Far East. Far East Tech. Civil Engineering.”

As soon as you finish your sentence, Yoora starts yelling as well. Yoora runs to her brother and hugs him tightly, and Chanyeol lifts her slightly and spins her around the room. You could see tears forming at the corner of Yoora’s eyes and your heart almost bursts from seeing how she loves her brother so much.

Of course, Chanyeol is Chanyeol, so he teases her until her tears of joy dissipate and her face contorts back into a scowl.

“What about you?” Yoora asks. “Which schools did you get into?”

Chanyeol, seeing the worried expression form again on your face, answers for you. “We haven’t checked yet,” he explains to his sister. “We were just about to.”

“I hope you get into the school you want,” she says kindly, her eyes gleaming with sincerity. She walks back towards the door and starts shouting for their mom about Chanyeol’s acceptance.

Chanyeol returns to your side and rubs his palms over your shoulders to calm you down. “You ready to check yours?” he asks, and you’re not sure what to say. When you still don’t reply after a few seconds, Chanyeol suggests, “How ‘bout I check them for you? Log into your e-mail and I’ll be the one to read the letters if you’re not ready yet.”

You nod weakly and input your details into the page. In no time, your inbox loads with four new e-mails. You stand up from the desk and lay face down on Chanyeol’s bed, your heartbeat drumming in your ears as Chanyeol checks your status letters for you.

After a few minutes and a few audible clicks on the laptop, Chanyeol breaks the silence. “I saw them. Do you want to know?”

You feel Chanyeol’s body dip into the mattress and you lift your head to look at him. His expression is unreadable and your anxiety skyrockets even higher.

“Okay,” you whisper.

“Athenaeum, waitlisted for Social Sciences,” he begins.

 _That’s not bad_ , you think. _It’s not easy to get into the Athenaeum—their acceptance rate is only at fifteen percent—and yet you got waitlisted_. You’re not disappointed, not really, because you never really dreamt of getting into the Athenaeum. Once the information sank in, you urge Chanyeol to continue.

“St. Thomas, accepted for Asian Studies.”

You nod as you bite your lip. St. Thomas is a good school, but you’ve never really imagined yourself going there.

Chanyeol continues, “Maryknoll, accepted for International Studies.”

Your heart leaps in your chest. Maryknoll might not be your dream school, but you got accepted there in your dream program. That’s like half the dream already.

Chanyeol suddenly smiles knowingly. You arch your brow at him. “Also… Maryknoll’s offering you a scholarship,” he says.

Your heart doesn’t just leap in your chest at Chanyeol’s words. Your heart feels like it has stopped beating altogether. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

“Why would I joke about that?” Chanyeol laughs. He combs his fingers through your hair while you’re sprawled on his bed. “You finished in the top twenty of your batch of examinees. They also mentioned something about your high school grades being outstanding, so they’re offering to waive your tuition by seventy-five percent.”

“Seventy-fucking-five percent,” you repeat, not believing what you just heard. “Seventy-five… like _more than half_ of the tuition fee?”

“Well… yeah,” Chanyeol says. “Seventy-five percent _is_ more than half of something.”

“You’re serious.”

“I’m not kidding!” He protests, his lips falling into a pout. “Why won’t you believe me?”

“It’s just…” you trail off.

It’s just that you’re not really the kind of student that schools offer scholarships to; you do well in school, but there have always been people who are better. It’s just that you don’t see yourself as _that_ good. It’s just that you usually have a hard time saying you’re proud of yourself.

But you don’t say any of that.

“Time for ULS,” Chanyeol says. “Are you nervous?”

You heave a deep sigh. “Nervous is an understatement.”

Chanyeol leans towards you and plants a kiss on your cheek. His mouth then retreats from your face to your ear, his lips just barely grazing the earlobe as he whispers, “You got in.”

The world stops spinning. Your breath hitches in your throat. Your heartbeat pounds in your ears.

“You got accepted in ULS for International Studies.”

You sit up from the bed, tears falling from your eyes. Chanyeol looks at you with a smile just as wide as the one he had when he found out he got accepted into Far East Tech, and his eyes are smiling along with him.

He opens his arms and you instantly wrap yourself tightly around him. You’ve wanted this for so long and now that you’ve got it, it feels surreal. You wonder if your ten year old self is proud of you. She probably is.

Chanyeol strokes your hair as his arms envelop you. “I’m so proud of you,” he says, “I knew you’d get in. I always knew.”

At Chanyeol’s words, you cry harder.

If you usually have a hard time saying you’re proud of yourself, Chanyeol is the complete opposite. He’s never had a problem being vocal about believing in you, and he’s one of the few people that constantly reminds you of how amazing you are, even though you don’t feel like it’s true.

“Thank you, Yeol,” you cry into his chest.

“You are _such_ a crybaby,” he teases, and you playfully slap him on the shoulder. “Don’t turn into a crybaby when you miss me, okay? We’re in college now. We have to be mature.”

You get catapulted back into reality—the reality that you getting accepted into ULS means you’ll be studying far away from Chanyeol and that the two of you might not see each other as often now.

“Wait. I can… I can go to St. Thomas instead of ULS. St. Thomas is closer to Far East, so that way we can—”

“Stop,” Chanyeol says firmly as he cups either side of your face with his palms. He looks at you straight in the eye and continues, “You’re not giving up your dream school for me, for our relationship. That’s not right.”

“But—”

Chanyeol shakes his head. “No. ULS is your dream school. You’ve wanted that even before the two of us met. Nothing should come before that. Do you understand me?” You sigh before nodding. “We’ll make it work,” he says, “I promise.”

You close your eyes, tears falling from them, as Chanyeol kisses your forehead.


	3. Part Three

_“This is the way the world ends  
Not with a bang but a whimper.”_

_(T.S. Eliot,_ [ _The Hollow Men_ ](https://allpoetry.com/The-Hollow-Men) _)_

—

 

**_Present Day_ **

There is no harder question than the one asked by _what if_.

It’s amazing how two small words can cast such big shadows and make you question every single decision you’ve made, whether big or small, and make you ask yourself what could’ve happened differently if you just chose one over the other.

_What if you never went to ULS? What if you accepted the scholarship from Maryknoll? What if you went to St. Thomas instead? What if you just didn’t get mad at Chanyeol that one night? What if you were a bit more understanding when the two of you were still together? What if you knew all the things you know now back then?_

So many questions. So many what ifs.

But ultimately, it all boils down to a single one.

_Would you and Chanyeol still be together?_

You sigh and wrap Baekhyun’s borrowed coat tighter around your body. It’s about half an hour before midnight and the air has gotten colder. You and Chanyeol are walking back to the reception now, your bare feet leaving prints on the sand before the tide washes them away.

Chanyeol has his left hand in his pocket as he carries his shoes with the other. He looks more relaxed than he did earlier this evening, his face radiating this odd calmness.

In a way, you feel calmer too. Lighter. Perhaps it’s because the two of you have managed to somehow talk about the past even if you’ve just barely scratched the surface. There’s definitely more to talk about. You let out another sigh.

“What’s wrong?” Chanyeol asks. “You’ve been sighing for the past five minutes.”

“I was just thinking about… some stuff.”

“For someone who has a degree in literature, you’re not very articulate,” he says, chuckling incredulously.

For a split second, you freeze. “How did you know I changed majors?” You don’t remember telling him about it, and he couldn’t possibly have heard it from Baekhyun because you didn’t tell Baekhyun about it either. Aside from your family, only Sehun knows that you shifted in your second year.

“I know Junmyeon,” Chanyeol explains. “Kim Junmyeon. He teaches Creative Nonfiction at the Athenaeum. I saw a picture of you and him, maybe at some writing workshop? I’m not sure. Anyway, I was surprised, so I told him that I know you. He mentioned that you were from ULS Lit.”

You haven’t heard the name Kim Junmyeon in a while now, the last time probably a year or two ago. The two of you met through various writing workshops where both of you were invited as guest speakers, and a friendship would naturally grow out of your many opportunities to work with each other. Actually, it was _more_ than a friendship, but you don’t mention that minor detail to Chanyeol. It didn’t work out with Junmyeon, anyway—just casual sex that happened maybe three to five times (which just goes to prove that relationships between two literature majors are doomed to fail).

Junmyeon eventually stopped attending the workshops and at first you thought it was because it was his final phase of ghosting you, but later on you found out that he flew to Japan to get his PhD in Asian Literature.

“Why didn’t you continue with International Studies?” Chanyeol asks. “I thought that was your dream program. You’ve been dreaming about it since we were juniors.”

You purse your lips, not knowing where to start. “You know that feeling when you _really_ want something, but when you get it, it doesn’t feel like the thing that you’ve been dreaming of? Like it doesn’t live up to the dream?”

Chanyeol nods weakly.

 

 

**_August 2008_ **

Like all other things, college isn’t like how you thought it would be.

Even though the school is _exactly_ like you imagined—nice campus, good professors, and everything else in between—something still feels out of place. To be more specific, _you_ feel out of place.

Homesick. That’s how you feel.

The Capital isn’t anything like the small town you spent eighteen years of your life in. You’ve been to the city before, but actually living in it is a whole other story.

The Capital is loud. Chaotic. It will eat you up alive if you’re not quick on your feet. People move fast, but everything else runs slow: the lines at the train stations, the traffic along Highway 54, the passage of the week as you eagerly wait for Friday to come.

You miss your old town. You miss the stillness of your neighborhood as dawn breaks. You miss the sound of birds chirping as you open your eyes in the morning. You miss seeing the stars from the terrace of your parents’ house.

But above all, you miss Chanyeol.

The first month has been a mess. Every night since the term started, you cried in your room until you fell asleep. For the first few weeks, you had Chanyeol to cry to through the phone. It’s been harder to get a hold of him as the days went by. Now in your second month in the city, you only manage to talk with Chanyeol on the phone for maybe once a week, sometimes not at all. You haven’t even seen him in two months.

You try your best to understand him, as you’re not the only who’s adjusting to this whole thing. People get busy and Chanyeol is no exception. You’ve been busier yourself now that term’s starting to pick up its pace since your university runs on a trimestral system which means one term lasts only for more or less four months.

But your instincts keep on telling you that something’s wrong.

You and Chanyeol rarely fight. If you do, it’s about something petty that’ll be resolved in less than a day, three days, tops. But since the start of the new academic year, the fights between the two of you just keep on piling up—mostly about Chanyeol not being easy to talk to.

The calls stop coming.

The messages get shorter.

This is how it feels to lose someone, you realize.

 

 

**_October 2008_ **

Waking up is easy because you didn’t sleep a wink last night.

Your eyes feel heavy, the soreness from crying all night dragging down your eyelids and stinging like acid on your pupils.

Waking up is easy, but getting up isn’t.

You’re pinned down on the thin mattress you’ve come to call your bed for the past four months, your body refusing to work against gravity with your heart acting like an anchor that weighed a thousand tons, immobilizing your limbs and numbing your senses. It’s too heavy on your chest.

The shrill, metallic sound from your phone catapults you back to your wits—what’s left of it, anyway—and reminds you that you need to get up. You need to get up because you’re doing something important today. It’s the day that you’ve been preparing for, the day when the world will come crashing down on your shoulders. It’s the day that you’ve lost sleep for. The day that’s been the only thing on your mind for the past few months.

It’s judgement day, the beginning of the end.

The conversation you had with Chanyeol last night plays over and over again in your mind as you stand under the shower. The words he said… they don’t feel real at all. They don’t feel like they came from Chanyeol at all.

You step out of the shower feeling more weary than refreshed. Staring blankly at the rack of clothes in front of you, you wonder what you should wear today.

On a normal day, on any other day that you would go to school, you’d pick the best casual outfit you could put together so that you’d look your best the entire day. But today isn’t a normal day, and you’re not going to school. You want to dress like how you’re feeling—dark, but maybe, just maybe, if you don yourself in soft colors, the pain that you’re feeling would lighten as well and the outcome of today would change.

But something tells you that’s not going to happen.

After half-heartedly picking at your pancakes, you decide to catch up on the book that you’re supposed to read for your literature class. The novel had been assigned to the class a couple of weeks ago, but you haven’t read past two chapters because of all the things that have been fighting for space inside your mind, distracting you from functioning properly in school and everywhere else.

Even now, you find yourself reading the same paragraph over and over, restarting when you realize that you didn’t understand a single word. Eventually, you give up and succumb to the dread in your heart that only grows heavier with each passing minute.

The anxiety from overthinking about what’s going to happen in a few hours feels like you’re being stabbed in the chest and you try to control your breathing by synching it with each tick of the hand on your gold wrist watch.

You know what’s going to happen; you knew it since a gut feeling told you that something was wrong with Chanyeol. But still, you want to stop it from happening. You want to iron through this huge wrinkle even though you know well that it’s already beyond repair.

It’s wrong to pick up the broken shards of an irremediable bond, but can anyone blame you for loving Chanyeol so deeply that you want to fix everything even if it would leave cuts and bruises on your hands and heart?

 _Yes_ , the sane part of your consciousness answers your stupid question. _Yes, it’s wrong, stupid girl. It’s all wrong. That’s not love. That’s martyrdom. Use your fucking brain._

Of course, you don’t listen. You find it hard to listen to advice, even if it’s your own.

Your phone lights up and buzzes on the table and your heart almost bursts in your chest.

**[ Chanyeol / 11:47 ]  
** _I’m almost there._

You grab your bag and bolt out of your apartment to head to the train station as soon as you read Chanyeol’s text message.

The Yellow Line is uncrowded, which is odd even for a midday trip, since every hour is rush hour in the Capital. But even if the train is cramped like a sardine can, you wouldn’t mind. You’ve gotten used to the nuisances of the city. Perhaps desensitized is a better word to describe it.

It’s sad that when you’ve managed to get the hang of living in the city, you’ve lost hold of your relationship with Chanyeol.

It’s as if the universe is telling you that you can’t have two of them at the same time, like you have to give up one to enjoy the other.

The train arrives at North Avenue after seventeen minutes, and every step you take towards the meeting place that you and Chanyeol agreed on adds weight to your heart that’s already too heavy for you to carry.

The ‘Circle’, as locals call it, is a park located inside a large traffic circle in the shape of an ellipse and is bounded by a two-kilometer roundabout which circumscribes it. You and Chanyeol agreed to meet here because it’s halfway between your side of the metro and his, which means it’s easily accessible to both of you.

The park is expectedly empty since it’s the middle of the day in the middle of the week and people are probably at school or at work taking their lunch breaks. Apart from that, the sky is overcast, making a stroll outside rather uninviting.

Chanyeol sees you before you see him. He taps your shoulder and his sad smile is the first thing you see when you turn around to face him. Your chest tightens, but you force yourself to smile back, no matter how fake it would look.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hey, Chanyeol.”

 

 

**_November 2008_ **

Losing Chanyeol doesn’t happen all at once.

Losing him comes in fragments—in how his name stops popping up on your phone, in the way his scent fades from the dark blue hoodie he left at your apartment the last time he was here, in how you gradually forget the taste of his lips and the feeling of his touch on your skin—until nothing is left.

Losing Chanyeol is like dying a slow death.

His words still ring in your ear like it was yesterday.

_“I keep on hurting you even if I don’t intend to and it hurts me to hurt you.”_

As you lay on your bed with your pillows stained with tears, you wonder if Chanyeol is hurting right now, if he was hurt at all. Seems like he wasn’t, not when he’s already posting photos with a new girl and captioning them with hearts.

 _“I’m doing this more for you than it is for me_.”

Maybe he was lying. Maybe it _was_ more for him. Maybe you were the only thing that was preventing him from being truly happy, the only obstacle that was hindering him from being with the person he really wanted to be with.

_“You deserve someone better.”_

Maybe he was really talking about himself, about how he deserves someone better than you. Chaeyoung. Maybe that was his way of saying Chaeyoung was better than you. You wouldn’t doubt it. She was all Chanyeol talked about the last few weeks of your relationship, thinking you wouldn’t notice.

But you did. You notice everything.

And try as you may, you couldn’t simply shake off the feeling that there was something going on between the two of them. No matter how many times you try to convince yourself that Chanyeol’s probably just had a lot to say about his new friend, your instincts insist otherwise.

And they were right. Your instincts are rarely wrong.

A soft knock resonates on your bedroom door. Footsteps that sound unmistakably like Sehun’s plod through the wooden floor as the smell of greasy Chinese takeout fills the room.

On any other day, your stomach will rumble at the mere aroma of food, but your appetite has left you for more than a month now and is yet to come back. Sehun single-handedly tries to feed you. If it isn’t for him, you wouldn’t be eating at all.

It’s childish to kill yourself slowly just because you’re heart is broken, that, you are immensely aware of. But at the same time, you can’t do anything but succumb to the pain throbbing in your chest because when the heart hurts, the entire body suffers with it.

Sehun sets down the takeout box on your bedside table. He toes off his slippers and climbs onto the bed, slipping under the covers with you as he wordlessly wraps you in his arms. You burst into yet another wave of tears as you press your face further into his neck and crumple his shirt in your hands. You feel Sehun’s Adam’s apple bob against your cheek, and when a tear falls onto your forehead, you realize that it’s because his throat was tightening as he tried and failed to bite back his tears.

You don’t know why Sehun is crying, but you don’t like it when people ask you why you’re crying so you don’t pry the reason out of him.

Instead, you simply say, “It hurts, Sehun. It hurts so much.”

He embraces you tighter. “I know,” he replies, as if he can also feel the pain you’re feeling right now.

—

On Chanyeol’s birthday, you send him a text message that you promised yourself would be the last one. Ever.

**[ You / 17:48 ]  
** _Happy birthday, Yeol. Sorry for everything that happened. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy. Enjoy your day. :)_

For the first time, you don’t wait for his reply.

 

 

**_December 2008_ **

December used to be your favorite month of the year. For starters, it’s your birth month. Another reason is that it’s the month with the longest holidays, from the week before Christmas up to the week after New Year.

But now, the holidays just remind you of two things: your birthday three years ago when Chanyeol first confessed his feelings and gave you the necklace that you still wear for some reason and the countdown the two of you begin on the first day of January to the date of your anniversary which falls on the twenty-fourth.

Your birthday isn’t the same without him. The holidays aren’t the same without him. But you remind yourself that you have spent more birthdays and holidays without Chanyeol than you did with him which means you can do it again.

He sends you a text on your birthday.

**[ Chanyeol / 16:35 ]  
** _Happy birthday! :) Enjoy your day!_

You don’t reply, keeping the promise you made to yourself a month ago.

—

The Green Line of the metro rail system is famous for its interesting interior decorations that change every month. For December, the trains should be decorated with designs that have something to do with the holidays, so you find it odd that the theme for December of this year is poetry. Spanish poetry, to be exact.

Beautiful Spanish poems and their English translations beside them are plastered everywhere inside the train: the floor, the seats, the windows. Commuters look around at every corner of the train, trying to read as many poems as possible before they arrive at their stop.

One poem in particular caught your attention. It’s pasted just above the train doors, beside the emergency buttons.

 _Y de pronto, no estás. Adiós, amor, adiós._  
Ya te marchaste.  
Nada queda de ti. La ciudad gira:  
Molino en el que todo se deshace.

Of all the poems plastered here on this train, of all the trains in the Green Line, the universe has made it possible for you to read this one, as if it knows that it’s exactly how you feel right now.

 _And suddenly, you are gone. Farewell, love, farewell._  
You’ve already left.  
Nothing remains of you. The city spins:  
Like a mill that crushes everything.

Chanyeol is gone and nothing is left of him.

The city keeps on spinning like a mill, but you’re not going to let it crush you. Not anymore.

 

 

**_January 2009_ **

When the twenty-fourth of the month rolls onto the calendar, your heart hurts anew. It would’ve been your third anniversary with Chanyeol.

 _It would’ve been._ What a sad sentence.

In an attempt to dull the ache in your chest, you head out to The Groove, an upscale pub along Freedom Avenue in the infamous suburbs of Pobla. You’ve only been to The Groove twice, in both instances with Sehun, but its very laid-back atmosphere has already won your heart in those two short nights. It’s like a pub for people who want to drink their sorrows away quietly instead of the typical bar thumping with bass and packed with sweaty bodies.

On your third bottle of Stallion, someone taps your shoulder and asks for a light.

The voice should’ve been a dead giveaway, but nonetheless, you’re still surprised when the face you see when you turn around belongs to an old, forgotten love that you haven’t seen for quite some time now.

“Jongin,” you smile. “I thought I recognized your voice.” He has this distinct tone that’s kind of hard to describe. His voice feels like everything sweet and familiar—like honey and home. It feels warm. It makes you feel safe.

Jongin laughs, causing the weird dimple that’s way too high on his cheek to appear. You loved that dimple.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says. He takes the lighter from your hand and lights his cigarette, exhaling once before he continues, “I never thought I’d see you again after high school, quite frankly. And here, out of all places.”

Jongin takes the empty seat beside you and makes himself comfortable. You watch him with a fascinated smile; he looks good, you must admit. Better than he did in high school. But at the same time, his aura feels the same, exactly like the kid who you gave your heart to before you did to anyone else.

You light yourself a stick and take another swig of your lager. “Me too,” you admit. As a matter of fact, Jongin hasn’t crossed your mind once since graduation—until tonight. “I lost news about you.”

“I did too. But I knew you went to ULS. I wasn’t surprised, really. Since we were kids, I’ve always pegged you as a ULS girl. Cool, calm, sophisticated.”

You try to ignore the heat creeping up to your cheeks, dismissing it as the alcohol finally kicks in. You hope that Jongin hasn’t noticed. “I heard you got into St. Thomas. Engineering. I wasn’t surprised either. The only subject you cared about back in high school was math.”

Jongin laughs again, his eyes gleaming under the dim lights of the pub. His skin looks warm, like freshly-melted butter on hot toast, and you wonder silently if you’ll get to touch more of him tonight or if that’s just wishful thinking.

“Why are you here alone? Where’s Chanyeol?”

His question makes the smoke taste bitter as it swirls in and out of your lungs. You softly shake your head. “We’re not together anymore,” you say with a small smile.

Jongin’s eyes widen in shock and realization. It’s subtle, but you catch it. You’re always quick to notice people’s reactions before they even get the chance to cover it up.

“Oh… I’m—I’m sorry,” he stammers.

You chuckle as you wave his apology off. You take another drag of your cigarette before replying. “It’s okay. It doesn’t always work out between people. I mean, take us, for example.”

“Still… The two of you were together for, what, three years?”

“Almost,” you correct. “It’s supposed to be our third anniversary today, but I guess there isn’t an anniversary to celebrate anymore.”

Jongin arches his brow. “Is that why you’re drinking alone on a Tuesday night?”

“It’s the only reason why I drink at all.”

Jongin doesn’t know what to say after that. He puts out his burned-out cigarette on the glass ashtray and calls over a server to order his own bottle of beer. He still looks awkward and tries to cover it up by lighting another stick.

You laugh softly, taking a particularly long sip of your Stallion. “It’s okay,” you repeat. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me. Like I said, it doesn’t always work out between people. I’m used to being the one being left behind. In a way, I have _you_ to thank for that. You’re like the one who prepared me for what’s possibly the most painful breakup I’ll ever experience in my lifetime.”

Jongin winces. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I never got to apologize for what happened between us. I hope it’s not too late.”

“That was _six_ years ago,” you chuckle as you shake your head. “I’ve forgiven you a long time ago.”

Jongin’s Heineken arrives after that and he finishes half of it in record time. “I want to make it up to you. Even if it’s six years late,” he laughs. “Tell me anything you want me to do and I’ll do it. No questions asked.”

You eye him curiously, a lazy smile playing across your lips. Jongin takes a swig of his beer and your eyes fall down on his throat as he swallows thickly. An idea blossoms in your mind and you mull it over, inhaling more of your cigarette and exhaling it slowly, suggestively in Jongin’s direction.

“I want you to be my temporary fix for tonight,” you finally say.

Jongin’s pupils dilate as he licks the remnants of Heineken on his lips. “I’d be happy to,” he replies.

 

 

**_December 2009_ **

Jongin was only one of the many temporary fixes you turned to in order to fill the void that Chanyeol left in your life. He was replaced with others soon after, but to you, they all felt the same. One-nighters. Casual sex. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sex was part of the holy trinity of debauchery that was your coping mechanisms along with smoking and alcohol. They weren’t particularly healthy, but they did the job. Short-lived bliss that you used as small steps to move on from Chanyeol.

Eventually, the need for sex stopped coming to you. You were fine on your own. The cigarettes and booze, not really. You can only give up so much.

But that’s okay, you guess. There’s no one way to move past grief as everyone’s coping mechanisms are different. What works for you might not work for other people, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not valid.

By the time one year has passed since you last heard from Chanyeol, you feel lighter. Freer. Like you can breathe more.

You’d be lying if you say you don’t think about him even once in a while because you do. More than once in a while, actually. You miss him, even. But the thing is, you’ve come to learn that you can miss something but not want it back—and you miss Chanyeol, god, you miss Chanyeol so much, but you don’t want him back. And if that doesn’t mean you’ve grown since last year, then you don’t know what does.

The seven stages of grief—shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, acceptance—doesn’t always go in that particular order for everyone. The only thing that people who are going through it have in common is that acceptance always comes last. Actually, acceptance usually comes last in everything.

But really, acceptance doesn’t come last.

Forgiveness does.

Forgiveness isn’t a necessary stage of grief. You don’t need to force yourself to forgive people who have hurt you because you have every right to be bitter from the pain they’ve caused you. But more often than not, they’re not the only ones responsible for whatever went wrong in the relationship. Owning up your mistakes is probably one of the most mature things you can ever do in your life.

Acceptance doesn’t stop at accepting that it’s over. You need to accept more things other than that. You have to accept that in a way, you’re just as responsible as Chanyeol is for the breakup. You have to accept that it’s no one’s job to cure your insecurities but yourself. You have to accept that no one can promise you that they’re not going to wake up in the morning and feel differently because you have no right to dictate other people’s hearts.

When you’ve accepted all these things, you learn to forgive—and among all the people that have hurt you, the one that you need to forgive the most is yourself.

December is once again your favorite month of the year. It’s your birth month. It’s the month with the longest holidays. It’s the month you received your favorite necklace four years ago, and most importantly. It’s the month you learned forgiveness.

You don’t know exactly when you’ve moved on from Chanyeol. Perhaps you’re still not, perhaps you won’t ever be. But the ache in your heart is gone when you think of him or hear his name. The fleeting emotions are sometimes still there—anger, fondness, nostalgia—but they don’t stay for too long. They come and they go, and you greet them like old friends.

You wonder if you’ll ever get the chance to greet Chanyeol like an old friend too.

 

 

**_Present Day_ **

When you and Chanyeol get back to the reception, most of the guests have left. The few remaining people are either chatting away while drinking wine on their tables or slow dancing as the live band plays another jazzy rendition of a sappy love song.

Kyungsoo is seated with Baekhyun and Jongdae while Yuna’s dancing with his older brother. Instead of heading to the trio’s table, you and Chanyeol head back to the smoking area where the night started for the two of you to mull over tonight’s conversations over cigarettes. Well, mostly for you. Chanyeol doesn’t smoke.

“You know… I was so disappointed in myself when I realized that International Studies isn’t actually the degree I want to work on in college,” you say out of the blue after you light a stick.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like giving up on things,” you say. “It was really hard for me to leave the program that was my first choice. I don’t like leaving things halfway. I wanted to finish it just for the sake of it, even though I didn’t like it.”

“You were never a quitter,” Chanyeol smiles.

 _He should know_ , you think. _You didn’t quit on your relationship so easily._

You just smile back at him. “Eventually, I realized that doing things that you love and you’re passionate about is more important than self-pride. I figured that if I didn’t change majors, I would be proud that I didn’t give up on my first choice, but on the downside, I wouldn’t be happy. I think being happy should be above everything, except when your happiness hurts other people in any way.”

Chanyeol remains silent as he watches his feet while he walks. You can’t pinpoint the emotions swirling in his features, but you feel like you’ve struck a chord.

“I’m happy with my choices,” you add when Chanyeol still doesn’t say anything. “Though sometimes, I still wonder what if I never went to ULS since I ultimately gave up on my dream program, which is one of the major reasons why I wanted to attend college there in the first place. What if I accepted the Maryknoll scholarship instead? What if… I went to St. Thomas instead?”

Chanyeol finally looks up and says without hesitation, “I would’ve been disappointed in you.”

“Why would you be?” You raise an eyebrow at him.

“Because I know that you would’ve made those decisions because of me, because you wanted to be closer to me. And even if you moved on to a different dream eventually, that was what you badly wanted at that time,” he says. “And I told you before, nothing should come before your dreams.”

You just smile at him. “I know that, Yeol. It just makes me think sometimes. What could’ve happened differently if I chose one thing over the other. It’s a fun little game, actually, because no matter how many times you ask yourself what if, you’ll never know the answer.”

Chanyeol opens his mouth as if to say something, but he closes it immediately. He does this again and again, kicking at the sand under his feet, looking up at the sky, flicking cigarette ashes that have strayed on his coat.

“Whatever you want to say, just say it. We’ve said all sorts of things to each other tonight, anyway,” you say when you can’t take his fidgeting any longer. “I doubt whatever you have to say will hurt any less.”

Chanyeol closes his eyes and sighs. When he opens them again, he says, “Sometimes I wonder what if I never broke up with you.”

You wait for the pain.

It doesn’t come.

Instead, you offer Chanyeol a small smile. “I would’ve been disappointed in you too, Yeol,” you say, flicking ash from your stick onto the receptacle. “You weren’t happy with me. I wasn’t happy with you even though I thought I was. You know that, more than anyone else.”

Chanyeol looks down at the ground and puts his hands in his pockets, nodding weakly.

“You can’t even imagine how angry I was with you, how you threw everything away like it was nothing. But eventually, I understood. It’s not your fault you fell out of love with me. What your heart feels is not and will never be your fault,” you pause for a second as you exhale smoke. You put your burned-out cigarette on the receptacle. “You told me that nothing should come before my dreams. Well, now I’m saying this to you: nothing should come before your happiness.”

When Chanyeol looks up, his eyes are shaking. The tears don’t come, but they don’t need to for you to know that’s what Chanyeol desperately needed to hear—that his happiness matters.

Chanyeol hugs you—for the first time in ten years—before you can say anything else. The gesture feels foreign, now that Chanyeol’s touch is something you’ve forgotten, but at the same time, his arms feel like home.

Like muscle memory, your arms snake around his neck without you even realizing it, and Chanyeol hugs you tighter until you can feel his heartbeat drumming against your own.

“Thank you,” Chanyeol whispers against your ear. “I’ve missed you.”

You freeze, because that’s when you realize that you’ve missed him as well. As a friend, more than anything else. He was your friend before he became anything else, which is why when you lost him, the friendship was lost as well. And nothing is more painful in the world than the feeling of losing a friend.

When Chanyeol pulls away, his face looks brighter, like he’s offloaded a thousand tons from his chest. He smiles, and it feels like you’ve traveled back in time to 2005 when the two of you were nothing but high school sophomores who were just starting a beautiful friendship and teasing each other about who knows more about basketball, blissfully unaware of what was about to come—unaware of the pain you were about to bring to each other, unaware of the consequences that came with loving someone.

You were each other’s greatest love, but you were both too young to know how to love each other.

But now that you’re both older, now that you both know better… Maybe…

A stammer. “Can we… How ‘bout we begin again?”

A glance at the wrist watch. The clock strikes twelve. Time ticks away, but doesn’t run out. Not anymore.

A smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Addendum:  
> 1\. _State U_ is based on the University of the Philippines, more commonly referred to as UP by locals, located in Diliman, Quezon City; it is the country’s national university, possibly the hardest one to get into.  
> 2\. The song that Chanyeol sings in the December 2005 flashback in the first chapter is “You and Me” by Lifehouse. The song really was released in 2005.  
> 3\. _Far East_ is based on Far Eastern University, more commonly referred to as FEU by locals and Piyu by students, located in the City of Manila.  
> 4\. _St. Thomas_ is based on the University of Santo Tomas, more commonly referred to as UST by locals, located also in the City of Manila; it is the largest Catholic university in the Philippines and in the world in a single campus and also claims to be the oldest existing university in Asia.  
> 5\. _ULS_ is based on De La Salle University, more commonly referred to as La Salle or DLSU by locals, located in Taft Avenue, Manila; as of writing, it is the second best university in the country following the University of the Philippines.  
> 6\. _Rolling Hills_ is based on the province of Batangas located in the Calabarzon region in Luzon, more or less four hours away from Manila by car. Rolling Hills comes from the province’s nickname, Land of Rolling Hills and Wide Shore Lands.  
> 7\. _Athenaeum_ is based on the Ateneo de Manila University, more commonly referred to as Ateneo or AdMU by locals, located in Katipunan, Quezon City, just beside Miriam College. "Ateneo" is actually the Spanish variant of "atheneum", the first educational institution in Rome.  
> 8\. _Maryknoll_ is based on Miriam College, an all-girls Catholic school located in Katipunan, Quezon City, just beside the Ateneo de Manila University. It was actually formerly called Maryknoll College.  
> 9\. _The Capital_ is based on Metro Manila. The Yellow and Green Line metro systems mentioned in the story are based on the Manila Metro Rail Transit System (more commonly referred to as MRT by locals) and the Manila Light Rail Transit System (more commonly referred to as LRT by locals) respectively; these two metro systems transverse Metro Manila and has a daily ridership of about a million passengers.  
> 10\. _Highway 54_ is based on the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, more commonly referred to as EDSA by locals, infamous for its heavy traffic jams that sometimes last for about three hours or even longer. The avenue really was named Highway 54 in the 1950s before it got its current name.  
> 11\. The poem mentioned in the December 2008 flashback in the last chapter is _Ciudad_ by Ángel González. It was part of the Berso Sa Metro campaign by Instituto Cervantes which aimed to introduce people to Spanish poetry and to encourage them to learn more about Spanish culture and language.  
> 12\. _The Groove_ is based on Boogie, a bar along Kalayaan Avenue in Poblacion, Makati City. The author used Freedom Avenue in the story; freedom literally translates to kalayaan in Filipino.  
> 13\. Stallion is a variant of Red Horse Beer, a popular lager brand in the Philippines known for being an extra strong beer.
> 
> Playlist (listen to it [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/mb341q9g08ycuthfo18wez2v1/playlist/7nhZRXqrXAO9dqW8HsxGvp?si=V_8_CDAgSRK1hwCs0rKAAg)):  
> 1\. Nina Juan - Tonight  
> 2\. Julius - Lilac  
> 3\. RINI - My Favourite Clothes  
> 4\. Ben&Ben - Maybe The Night  
> 5\. No Rome - Seventeen  
> 6\. Jensen & The Flips - B T T R  
> 7\. Daniel Caesar - Japanese Denim  
> 8\. NIKI - Chilly  
> 9\. Bruno Major - Easily  
> 10\. The 1975 - Medicine
> 
> Thank you for reading until the end! Say hello: [Tumblr](http://pcychedelic.tumblr.com/) / [Twitter](http://twitter.com/pcychedeiic/)


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